Phosphorus
by JuniperGentle
Summary: Leaving the island where the Star chose him days before Gingka and the others arrive to find the next Legendary Blader, Ryuga's path takes one turn and changes forever. Now face to face with new challenges, old demons and even older enemies, the only ones who walk beside the Dragon Emperor are his magnificent dragon - and a little boy called Tithi. Metal Fury AU.
1. Chapter 1

_Oh hi there._

 _Guess who's back from her COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONAL hiatus… without updates for her poor unfinished fics, but with a completely new one instead! Yeah, this is a great plan._

 _This is for Bighead98, who asked for it and kept poking me until I wrote it._

 _It's also for everyone who wrote PMs and reviews to me in the last two years, because I treasured every one of those messages and I would probably have drifted away from writing altogether without them._

 _And finally, if she ever reads this, this is for DragonFang2016, simply for being the first and best friend I had in this fandom, all those years ago._

* * *

 **Phosphorus**

 **Chapter 1**

The nights so high up in the mountains were wild and dark. That was fine, though. The wind howling through the gaps in the freezing stone walls would keep even the most stubborn of hunters in its den, and the darkness was so deep that even the moon couldn't pierce all the way to the base of the ruins.

It was here that the Dragon hunted.

He did not hunt prey, for food or for sport. He did not hunt for shelter. Instead, he sought one thing as relentlessly as the sun travelled across the sky.

The Dragon was hunting for power.

He had found it before in a place like this, standing wreathed in flames as the stars cascaded down on him. There were no flames here, save the tiny flicker of his campfire, but that didn't mean he was in the wrong place. The power of the Star in his bey called to its sister strength, and he knew another fragment of the Star was nearby, another part of the cosmic force he had sworn to make his own. Now all he had to do was find it, and take it.

Those who didn't know him well, which was pretty much everyone, probably would have assumed he was only after the power because he wanted it, because he wanted to be the strongest. They were wrong, of course, but he wasn't about to tell them that.

He was already the strongest, after all.

Now, he needed to _understand_ the power. Understanding just the tiny piece he'd picked up was difficult – he needed more to even begin to comprehend where it had come from and what it could be used for.

But that was a thought for later. He had to actually find the power first.

The embers of his fire had settled to the same deep red as L-Drago's scales, still radiating with the heat he had used to cook his dinner. It had been a good day, as far as days went now. He had food, warmth, a place to sleep, and best of all he had L-Drago purring sleepily in his head, content to be here in the heart of the wilds with just his blader for company.

At least, that was the plan.

A soft skittering of stones off to the left of his campsite brought both Ryuga and L-Drago to full awareness instantly, though they both remained perfectly still. No predator was that careless, but no prey animal would be this close.

So, a human. Treasure hunter? They were much more dangerous than wild animals, and there were plenty of them around, but most of them had been further down the mountain. There wasn't much left this far up to be worth the trip. Villager? Unlikely, especially in the dark.

Someone looking for him?

The sound came again, this time much closer. Well, if someone was trying to sneak up on him, they were going to be the ones surprised, not him.

"Come out," Ryuga growled as he got to his feet, not prepared to waste any time at all on this intruder. "I know you're there."

For a long moment, he heard nothing but the sound of the wind wailing through the ruins. Then there was a clatter, a muffled squeak, and _something_ tumbled out of the darkness into the light of his fire.

It wasn't human. That was Ryuga's first, fleeting thought as the strange form stumbled into view. The shape was all wrong, the colours were all wrong, and the face was too big, too – abstract?

An ember flared, and in the brief flash of light Ryuga managed to see the whole of the creature at once. It – whatever it was – was wearing an enormous mask, nearly three feet tall and covering the creature down to its knees. Human knees, or at least they looked it. Ryuga wasn't prepared to assume anything about this strange creature.

The masked thing came closer, close enough to the fire that he could see more of the details in the massive wooden headpiece. It was a work of art, even he could tell that. Mesoamerican in design. Probably older than the thing wearing it. But why wear a mask in the first place? And what was the creature doing here?

Before he could ask, the mask raised a hand and pointed at the single fish still slow-roasting in a packet of leaves at the edge of the fire, ready for breakfast, and Ryuga heard the unmistakeable sound of an empty stomach. Really? This thing came all the way up here to beg _him_ for food?

"The food's mine."

He got a soft whimper in return, and if the mask had been able to create expressions he was fairly certain it would have looked devastated.

"I told you, it's mine. Find your own." The mask just stared at him. " _Scram._ "

But the mask didn't move. Whether it was a last act of desperation or just because the creature had nowhere else to go, it took one step closer to Ryuga's fire, apparently ready to ignore his command in favour of just grabbing the fish.

Ryuga was losing patience. Usually, he wouldn't launch his bey at anyone who didn't have their own bey to defend with, but this was a special case. L-Drago Destructor was clipped into the launcher and sailing in a blaze of fire over the embers almost without a thought. Flames burst between them, sending the masked creature stumbling backwards with a shrill scream. That would do it. It always did.

… except not this time.

To Ryuga's exasperation, when the flames faded and L-Drago swung back to his hand, the masked creature was still there, still staring at him. He rolled his eyes. "Go away."

The mask shook its head. Ryuga's shoulders dropped in irritation.

"I said, _go away_. You can't have my food."

The mask shook its head again, making the feathers at the crest flop about. Actually, the whole creature shook in terror, but Ryuga ignored that. For a few minutes he stared at the strange figure on the other side of his campfire. Finally, he said "What do you want, then?"

The thing raised a little hand and opened it to reveal something even Ryuga hadn't expected.

"You've got a bey?" he asked. "You want a battle?"

At last, a sharp nod from the mask.

"Why?"

"Everyone else ran away when they saw me. No-one wants to play with me _ever_."

The voice was high and clear, though slightly muffled. It sounded very young. If it hadn't been for the fact that Ryuga was watching his companion very carefully, he might have thought the voice had come out of thin air.

"So you do talk."

Just a nod this time.

"What, are you shy?"

Another nod. Well, that did explain a few things. Normally he'd reject a challenge like this – what was the point of fighting opponents who were obviously too young to be anywhere near the power level he was looking for? - but it wasn't as if he had anything better to do right at that moment. Besides, L-Drago was restless and a battle would settle both of them, even if it barely lasted a single hit.

"Take the mask off. I'm not fighting someone when I don't even know what they look like."

He wasn't sure if he got a shake of the head or whether the entire body was just shaking, but as there was no move to take off the mask he assumed the former.

"Fine then. Get lost. I said I'm not fighting you unless you take it off."

"But I'm scared."

That was funny enough that Ryuga felt L-Drago laugh through his bones. "If you're scared now, why are you challenging me? Don't you know who I am?" It was very rare that he found someone who didn't know who he was, especially a blader. "I'm the Dragon Emperor."

To his surprise, that got no reaction at all. Or maybe it did, and he just couldn't see it behind the mask. Ryuga opened his hand enough to reveal the edge of L-Drago's fusion wheel hidden between his fingers.

"So what'll it be, kid? Battle, or mask?"

The mask was still shaking, the decorations on either side of the face jumping. But the sight of the other beyblade seemed to crystallise the creature's decision, and two small hands reached up to carefully remove the mask.

"Battle," it – he – said.

The kid, and it was a kid, was _tiny._ Ryuga was fairly certain he'd been taller than that when he was five. Bright pink hair stuck up in three bunches over his head, and his eyes were enormous in his face as he peeped at Ryuga over the edge of the mask. Other than the mask, most of his clothing seemed to be made up of some kind of traditional poncho with similar markings to the mask, though it seemed to be newer, judging by the condition it was in. Ryuga almost felt sorry for him. He was the _Dragon Emperor,_ he didn't go around attacking small children.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked, offering one more out. But the kid nodded vigorously, pulling a launcher out from under the poncho and aiming it straight at Ryuga, who somehow managed to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. "Not _here._ There's too many walls. Out there, on the flat." So what if that was to his advantage. Just because he wouldn't attack a small child out of the blue didn't mean he wasn't going to go easy on him.

There was a shallow depression in the wide rock shelf just beyond the sheltering spurs of rock that Ryuga had made his camp between. It was nowhere near deep enough to be a proper dish, but it would give them something vaguely sloped to let them pick up speed. It would do for now.

"Are you ready?" Ryuga called, only to see that the boy was already aiming. "Fine, then. Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

" _LET IT RIP!"_

There was a feeling in Ryuga's head like opening a window in the middle of winter, fresh and cold and _wakening_ , and L-Drago Destructor thundered across the makeshift dish to meet the yellowish bey head on. It felt good to battle again, even if this was only going to be a short fight.

"This is fun! This is so much fun! I can't believe I'm finally battling someone!"

What.

Ryuga stared at the boy on the far side of the dish, hovering between confused and alarmed and liking neither of those options. He hadn't been expecting a complete change of personality in battle.

"Quetzalcoatl, let's go!"

Ah, so that was the name of the bey. Interesting. Ryuga let L-Drago pounce, reading the shape of the doubled fusion wheel in the way the yellow bey bounced off of his own, and watching the movements it made across the stone as he tried to work out which performance tip it was using. His own Flat performance tip was running at full power, and the chance of him needing to use the Survive tip was slim to none. One hit would decide this.

"L-Drago!"

His dragon bellowed a challenge to the other bey, rising in a pillar of flame to tower over them both. With a satisfying _click_ , L-Drago Destructor's fusion wheel flipped into its full attack mode, letting the triple dragons loose to chew their way through the admittedly impressive defence Quetzalcoatl boasted. Castles always fell to dragons, after all.

"Ooooh, you're really strong! This is fun! I've never fought anyone like this before!"

Ryuga narrowed his eyes. This definitely wasn't going the way he'd imagined. Quetzalcoatl was no ordinary bey, almost perfectly balanced across Attack, Stamina and Defence. He was beginning to doubt that the kid he was fighting was just an ordinary blader either. It took exceptional skill and strength to withstand even one of L-Drago's full attacks. Time to turn things up a notch.

"Wait – what are you doing? Quetzalcoatl! What's happening to you?"

There was _power_ in this bey, much more than Ryuga had expected. Whether it was the power he was looking for, he didn't know, but there was only one way to find out.

L-Drago spat flames across the dish, then reeled back to wait, flipping the fusion wheel back to expose the lower rubber parts. Ryuga didn't engage the Stamina tip – there was no need for that, after all. Now every strike would bring power into his blade, enough to find its source and see if it matched the blazing wellspring that had lain hidden in L-Drago since that night he had stood beneath falling stars and screamed his name to the heavens as they drowned him in light. And if it _was_ from the same source, then maybe, just maybe, Ryuga would be one step closer to understanding why it had come to him in the first place.

Quetzalcoatl was wobbling. Even a bey as magnificently balanced as this one couldn't possibly stand up to the combined force of the Dragon Emperor and his dragon for long.

"You're… you're taking Quetzalcoatl's power away! That's a horrible way to win!"

Oh, so he'd noticed at last. "That's how I fight, kid. There's more where that came from – L-Drago!"

"Stop! Stop it stop it stop it stop it! This isn't any fun at all!"

For a split second, the words cut into a memory fragment he hadn't even known he still had, one from the time he didn't like to think about, when Ryuga had not been Ryuga, and L-Drago had been three in purple smoke instead of one in flame and glory. But then it was gone as L-Drago blazed even brighter, beautiful and terrible in the night. The boy looked _terrified_ , taking a step back and dragging his bey away from L-Drago Destructor.

"Dodge it, Quetzalcoatl! Don't let him hit you any more! Run away!"

"You wanted a fight," Ryuga called. "You're being a coward! How are you going to try to win if you don't hit me?"

"No! I don't want to do it like this! You're being mean, I don't wanna play with you any more!"

And the other bey skipped away from the depression in the rock and circled to tuck itself behind the child's legs like a scared puppy.

" _Play?_ " Ryuga asked, failing dismally at keeping even the tiniest bit of disgust out of his voice. "You think this is a _game_?"

"Beyblading's supposed to be fun! This isn't fun any more and you're being a big meanie!"

Ryuga had neither the patience nor the good nature required to actually form an answer to that. This was a _battle,_ and he wasn't Gingka. It was easy enough to let L-Drago's flames seep into his stare, and the aura of the massive dragon roared around him. The boy shrieked and backed up several steps, tripping over his feet and his bey as he did and ending up sprawled on the ground. "Go away! You're being scary, I don't like it!"

"You're the one who asked _me_ for a battle, kid," Ryuga snarled, losing all patience and lining L-Drago up for a final attack. "I warned you – _L-Drago!"_

"Quetzalcoatl, _Ashen Spark!_ "

To Ryuga's shock, the cowering bey suddenly shot out in front of its owner, whipping dust up in its wake. Catapulting off a rock, it spun up into the air, whirling around as if caught on the inside of a tornado. And then -

"What's _that_?"

The beast that screamed out of the facebolt was as serpentine as L-Drago, but pale cream instead of the fiery brilliance of his dragon. For a second, Ryuga thought it might be made of wood, only to lose the thought in the punch to the chest he felt as it wrapped itself around L-Drago and _tightened._

He couldn't breathe. His dragon bellowed in pain, using every coil of strength to throw his opponent off as the other beast drew tighter and tighter, wings curling up to protect its head as L-Drago blasted flames at it. Distantly, he registered that the boy was getting to his feet, no longer trembling. What kind of bey _was_ this? There was such power in it, even after he'd stolen so much. To bind L-Drago like that took incredible skill.

He was actually going to have to use some of his true strength. That hadn't happened in a while, and certainly not with an opponent this young. The last one like this he could think of was -

 _Haha!_ _T_ _hat'_ _s_ _how you say hello?_ _Interesting!_

It had been a long time since he had thought about the first time he met Yuu Tendo. This battle was nothing like that one had been, all full of pillars of sound and blades of light and the thunder of his purple triplicate dragon towering over all. He hadn't understood the concept of only using as much power as was needed then.

Well, now a little more power _was_ needed.

"L-Drago!"

His dragon roared a challenge to his strange, serpentine opponent, and a rising tide of flames cracked through the constricting loops of Quetzalcoatl's body. The other bey wavered on the attack, and Ryuga was there in an instant, L-Drago Destructor tearing into the fusion wheel and tossing the yellow bey up and out of the dish.

The boy stared up at him as the bey clattered to a halt at his feet. Ryuga fixed him with a glare.

"I've won. Now get lost."

To his shock and confusion, the boy's eyes grew wider than ever, and his mouth curled into a massive grin. "How did you _do_ that?" he asked, suddenly animated again, all terror lost. "You just broke my special move, no-one's _ever_ done that before!"

Ryuga decided not to answer. If it had been daylight, he would have walked off, leaving his strange opponent to collect his thoughts and his bey alone. But it was night, and the wind was still wild across the stone, and so he just stalked back to his fire, sat down with his back to the gradually-warming rocks, and ignored the boy.

"Can I fight you again?"

Oh no.

"Can I, _please_? I want to see how you did that! You must be really strong to do something like that."

How had he changed so much across the course of a single battle? Where was the thing that had hidden behind a mask and avoided speaking for as long as possible? "No. Get out of here, kid."

"But..." The boy looked down at his feet and was silent for a very long time. Finally, he said "I don't have anywhere else to go."

He was the Dragon Emperor, but he wasn't a _monster._ "Fine," Ryuga growled. "You can stay here tonight. In the morning, hit the road. And I'm not going to battle you. It's a waste of my time to fight someone I've already beaten so easily."

The boy looked somewhat crestfallen, but sat down on the far side of the fire and hugged the wooden mask to his chest. "Okay, Mr The-dragon-emperor."

L-Drago spluttered into laughter in his head, laughing _at_ him. "That's not my name, kid. That's who I _am._ "

"Isn't that the same thing?"

How did he end up in this mess? "No. Otherwise your name would be Tiny Annoying Thing. Which I presume it isn't."

"Oh. No. Tithi's what I'm called." The kid seemed to tuck in on himself slightly, making himself even smaller. "Then what's your name?"

The full force of his dragon suddenly leaned on his mind. _He_ did _make_ _us use a fraction of our power,_ L-Drago whispered. _I think we can afford to tell him who crushed him. Then he will carry our name further still._

He'd already relented on letting the kid stay by his fire for the night, but L-Drago had a point. "My name is Ryuga." He said it with all the pride of the Emperor, all the arrogance of the Dragon.

The boy _beamed_ at him. "It's nice to meet you, Ryuga! Now I'm not going to be lonely any more!"

Ryuga suddenly wondered if he had made a terrible mistake.

L-Drago just carried on laughing.


	2. Chapter 2

_Shhh we're pretending this came out a month ago._

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

Waking up was always an interesting process.

Behind closed eyelids, drifting between wakefulness and dreaming, Ryuga could almost see L-Drago as he stretched within him, slowly calling back the warmth he had kept steady beneath Ryuga's skin all night. Having a fire-dragon bound to him was wonderful when the weather was cold or no campfire would start. It was sometimes a race to see whether he or L-Drago would wake up first. His dragon was lazy, but could cheat because of his ties to the endless whirl of the stars above, so it was usually pretty close.

If Ryuga woke up first, he would wake up to a strange feeling of complete silence, and would have to poke his dragon until the constellation stirred enough for his presence to register in Ryuga's mind again. Ryuga didn't like the silence. L-Drago didn't like being poked.

If L-Drago woke up first, Ryuga would wake up _freezing._

This morning, however, they woke up as one when a loud clatter from the far side of the campsite cut through the sound of wind and brought Ryuga to his feet, L-Drago Destructor in its launcher and ready before he could even blink.

The little boy froze, staring at them – no, just him, L-Drago wasn't pushing forwards just yet – with eyes like saucers. Then he squeaked and dived back towards the rock he'd slept under, cowering behind the mask once more.

Ryuga lowered his launcher. "I thought I told you to hit the road, kid." The mask made no movement. Ryuga just shook his head and sat down again, pulling the charred leaf-packet from the ashes of the campfire and unwrapping it to reveal the fish that was going to be his breakfast. Maybe by the time he finished, the boy would be gone?

No such luck. The boy and his mask remained exactly where they were as Ryuga set about clearing away the camp, scattering the ashes and the bones of last night's meal to hide all evidence that anyone had passed that way. He didn't move until Ryuga had completely dismantled the campsite and hopped up onto the rock shelf to look for the path he had been following the day before.

"Where are you going?" a little voice asked, slightly muffled.

"On," Ryuga said, without looking back, and jumped down onto the path below.

.

Ryuga had been walking for about half an hour when L-Drago woke up properly and began his usual sweeps of the area around them. He could sense things coming from even further away than Ryuga could, which at least meant they never came across danger unprepared.

But when he reported back, it wasn't danger that was following them. It was a small boy with a large wooden mask.

Ryuga was very, very tempted to ask L-Drago to move them away, to use a fraction of the power within his blade and beast to ride lightning to a new location far from this strange child who seemed to have attached himself to Ryuga's coattails.

 _But he is very small,_ L-Drago said. _He will not be able to walk as fast as you can. We do not need to flee him._

 _I'm not running away from him, L-Drago,_ Ryuga grumbled, but kept walking. L-Drago was right – the boy's legs were short enough that Ryuga was pretty certain he would get left behind within an hour.

In fact, the boy dropped out of even L-Drago's range within three quarters of an hour, though that might have been because Ryuga deliberately walked just a little faster than he usually would. By mid-morning, only wildlife was anywhere near them, and Ryuga had descended from the mountains and was travelling through the foothills, always picking the more difficult route or the less direct way. In his opinion, there was no other way to train. Blading couldn't be a hobby for him – he couldn't hope to control L-Drago if he only connected with him when the blade was spinning. It had to be a constant link, maintained by constant training. That way, he would constantly become stronger.

The morning drifted towards noon. Following the tracks of some small deer-like thing, Ryuga came across a small stand of fruit trees by a stream, and gathered enough for a decent meal. Even better, the stream banks were home to some sort of tuber that L-Drago recognised as edible. Ryuga memorised the shape of the leaves and the stems so that next time he could find them without the help of his dragon.

A tree with a fork in the lower limbs was a good enough place to stop for food. The fruit wasn't quite ripe – it was too early in the year – but there were worse things to eat, and the tubers were perfect. Keeping back a handful for dinner, just in case he didn't come across anything else, Ryuga allowed himself half an hour to rest as the sun reached its highest and hottest. L-Drago settled back into the deeper recesses of Ryuga's mind, content to doze for a while in the comfort of his blader's thoughts.

Lulled by the sleepiness of his dragon, Ryuga came back to full awareness with a jolt when a twig cracked nearby. Freezing in place in the tree branches, he watched in astonishment as a now-familiar wooden mask peeped out between the leaves of a bush. How had the boy managed to catch up without either Ryuga or L-Drago noticing? Had Ryuga really been in one place that long?

 _L-Drago,_ he growled, and felt the tiniest hint of an utterly unapologetic _oops_ from his sleepy dragon.

The boy looked around carefully, but didn't seem to see Ryuga perched in the tree. In one hand, he had a bunch of the tubers that Ryuga had collected earlier, and what looked like some edible berries in the other. Curious. Apparently he had been tracking Ryuga more closely than Ryuga had thought, and knew how to find food on his own too. Well, that made sense now he thought about it – even a boy as small as this one needed to be able to find things to eat, living all the way up in the mountains.

 _Insects,_ L-Drago suggested cruelly. Ryuga ignored him and carried on watching the boy silently as he scanned around the area. It took Ryuga a second to realise that the boy was looking for Ryuga's own tracks. So he could follow trails as well. Now that _was_ interesting. Not that it was particularly impressive – Ryuga hadn't been trying to hide his path, after all. But it wasn't something that just anyone could do. As for _why_ the boy was following him in the first place, Ryuga had no idea.

Coming to a decision, Ryuga dropped from the tree branches in one swift movement, earning himself a muffled yelp as the boy stumbled back into the bushes. He didn't bother saying anything, simply striding off in the direction the stream was travelling. If the boy wanted to try following him, Ryuga wasn't going to stop him. But, he thought to himself as he jumped up onto an overhang of rock balanced above the path, he wasn't going to make it easy either.

As Ryuga carried on down between the foothills, the lush vegetation gave out to dry grass on windswept slopes, with only a narrow strip by the shrunken stream capable of holding life. Eventually, he found himself following a deep-cut valley, balancing over scree that threatened to send him tumbling ever faster down the gorge if he lost his footing. Easy, compared to some places he'd travelled.

 _He has stopped to eat,_ L-Drago said suddenly, about half an hour after Ryuga had left the tree he had eaten lunch in. _Now we can put some distance between us._

 _I thought we weren't running away from him?_ Ryuga pointed out, making L-Drago huff and curl up in a sulk.

The wind picked up as Ryuga carried on through the valley, occasionally hopping from one side of the stream to the other, as it was barely a few feet wide. Sometimes it was to go and examine at something he hadn't see before, because new things were always fascinating to find, but most of it was pure curiosity over the skills of his strange tracker. If he could follow Ryuga through this barren wasteland without Ryuga making it easy for him, he was something extraordinary.

The stream also offered some small silver fish to add to the vegetables he had gathered earlier, and almost buried under a fall of gravel, he found a small tree covered in early hazelnuts. There would be little food to find in the desert he was heading towards, so anything extra he could pick up here would be one more thing he didn't have to think about later.

Picking up on his blader's curiosity as he usually did, L-Drago kept tabs on their follower, offering what eventually became a running commentary as Ryuga made his way towards the end of the hills and the desert beyond them. The boy appeared to be truly skilled at tracking, following Ryuga's path precisely over the stream, even finding the hazelnut tree. But he was too loud, and the fish fled at his approach, so the nuts were all he managed to gather. Despite himself, Ryuga couldn't help but become somewhat fascinated. The boy was a puzzle that he wanted to solve, even though the very fact that he was following Ryuga was irritating.

The sun sank lower in the sky as the minutes turned to hours, turning the clouds a vivid orange like L-Drago's mane. As the Evening Star faded into view, Ryuga set about finding a place to camp. Down here, there was even less shelter than up in the mountains, and whilst the wind wasn't as bitter, he knew nothing short of L-Drago's flame would start a fire tonight. But luck – or at least, good reading of the land – was on his side. With more and more stars peeping out in the sky every passing moment, he found a sheltered hollow between two arms of rock, mostly shielded from the wind. There was no need to push on further tonight. The big tournament he had heard rumours of in the previous town wasn't due to start for another three days, and whilst he didn't know precisely where it was ("in the desert" was a fairly sizeable area after all), he could always rely on L-Drago's lightning to carry him towards the highest concentration of bladers in the area.

Setting up camp was easy. Ryuga barely carried anything except his bey and the food he'd gathered throughout the day – why bother carrying a tent or a sleeping bag when his dragon was shelter and warmth and protection all in one? The stream, wider but shallower as it crept towards the desert, provided piles of smooth, rounded stones perfect for building a fire-pit, and a stand of trees a few minutes' walk away had plenty of dead wood for fuel.

 _Ryuga,_ L-Drago whispered as they headed back with a tall stack of wood. Ryuga knew what he meant at once, and halted at the entrance to the hollow. On the opposite side to Ryuga's fire-pit, a small figure sat with its back to the entrance. Beside it, a large wooden mask covered in tribal carvings lay flat on the ground.

The boy had found them again.

Ryuga debated for a second whether to throw the kid out of the hollow altogether and send him on his way to find his own place to stay, but hesitated. There was enough room for them both in the hollow, and as long as the boy stayed on his side of the enclosed space, they could well have been two travellers who just happened upon the same shelter at the same time. The boy wasn't travelling _with_ Ryuga, after all. It wouldn't be the first time he had shared an area with another traveller, though admittedly it would be the first time he'd spent two nights in a row in close proximity to the same person.

Announcing his presence by stalking in, dropping the wood with a loud clatter, and making the boy jump and scurry backwards towards the rock walls, Ryuga sat down next to his fire-pit and began to stack the wood carefully inside it, ready for lighting. Looking up, he noticed that the boy had crept away from the wall again and had resumed setting up his own fire, only occasionally glancing over to the man he had followed all day. He wasn't copying Ryuga's circular wall of stones, however. He was building something rather like a cairn, a hemisphere open on one side rather than at the top, already filled with wood that the boy must have picked up before he reached the hollow. It vaguely reminded Ryuga of the straw bee skeps he had sometimes stolen honey from when he was a child.

Why was he thinking of that at a time like this?

L-Drago laughed soft and low in his head, tasting the memory of honey and purring his pleasure in the taste. Ryuga shook his head to push the thoughts back into the past where they belonged, and sat back on his heels to examine his own fire. Yes, this would do nicely. He was about to unclasp L-Drago Destructor from its case when a flash of light and sound shattered through the hollow. Instinct kicked in, and Ryuga suddenly found himself on his feet, L-Drago Destructor ready in the launcher and pointed straight at the threat -

\- which stared back at him with terrified eyes from beside the fire it had just lit with its own beyblade.

Ryuga lowered his blade slowly. So the boy knew how to make fire from the heat of a spinning bey? Interesting. Much more interesting than the terror still frozen on his face. This boy was easily the most curious thing Ryuga had encountered in months. To follow him all the way down from the mountains, to already have the base of knowledge that Ryuga had painstakingly won in his first few weeks of living in the wilds, to have such a strange bey that could pin L-Drago, even for a moment… all of them were things that demanded an explanation.

But not now. Ryuga had better things to do with his time than ask questions of strange boys who wouldn't leave him alone – like light his own fire.

Calling fire from his blade was easy. He barely had to launch for L-Drago to spark lightning against the tinder and set it merrily ablaze. Ignoring the boy's continued glances, Ryuga put a couple of the fish on sticks supported by the rocks, set some of the hazelnuts and the remaining tubers on the top of the little wall, and then settled down to completely check over L-Drago Destructor whilst his food cooked.

One breath in. One breath out.

The facebolt wasn't quite tight enough, but as he was undoing it anyway, that was merely something to check later. He noted it, and moved on.

One breath in. One breath out. _Pay attention._

The fusion wheel was warm against his fingers, slightly hotter than blood-heat from the presence of the dragon who inhabited the blade. An ember popped in the fire, breathtakingly loud in the stillness of the hollow. Ryuga carefully levered the core of the blade apart from the base, examining it for dust or scratches. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

One breath in. One breath out. _Pay attention to the present._

He could feel the warmth of the fire on the side of his face, and the pressure of the wood stack he was leaning against at his back. There was a faint shuffling sound nearby. The base of his blade had a slight scuff mark, but it wouldn't have to be sanded out – the soft cloth would be enough. There was also some dust in the performance tip change mechanism, but again that was easy to clean out.

One breath in. One breath out. _Steady._

He knew this blade now. When it had first morphed into its current form from the Meteo L-Drago he had trained so hard with, even he had struggled to control the massive amount of power it held. But he trusted himself, and trusted his dragon, and between the two he had begun to understand the limits – or not – of this new blade with its multiple modes and terrifying strength. To wield such an awesome weapon was a privilege he was determined to be worthy of. He no longer doubted his ability to master it. It was _his_ blade, from the core to the facebolt to the rubber points on the fusion wheel.

One breath in. One breath out. _Listen._

L-Drago stretched within Ryuga's mind as the blade lay in pieces in his hands, reaching out to his blader and humming along their connection. Ryuga reached back for a moment, and let the differences between the two of them wash away in a deluge of sensations that swamped his own senses.

 _\- leaves whisper secrets to the wind fire tastes like water on my/your/our tongue breath of onetwothreefourfive creatures smells bright in the night let the darkness come and I/you/we will blaze in it let me/you/us be one -_

Almost reluctantly, but knowing this was as far as he could allow the dragon to press into his sense of self before he stopped being _Ryuga_ and started being a lot more _L-Drago,_ Ryuga closed off the link and pushed his beast away until the distinction between them was clear once more.

 _No, L-Drago. I am Ryuga._

The dragon shuddered and resettled, content for the time being, leaving Ryuga with only his own, limited senses. The fire didn't feel so warm now. The pieces of L-Drago Destructor didn't seem so vibrant in his hands as he put them back together, listening with human ears for any strange crunches or grinding that might suggest hidden dirt or grit in the mechanisms.

One breath in. One breath out. _There_ _._

A final polish for the whole of the blade, and Ryuga was satisfied with his handiwork. Combining the physical checks with the slow, almost meditative breathing and feeling the present moment through every sense was the best way he had found to remain human, to remain _Ryuga._ L-Drago felt things very differently to him, after all, and whilst he was unlikely to push forwards into Ryuga's psyche again in the way he had in the battle against Gingka so long ago, it was good to know precisely where his dragon ceased and his self began. It helped, on the days when L-Drago was just a little too aggressive for safety.

Ryuga looked up.

Two purple eyes were staring right into his own.

The boy was _inches_ from him, eyes wide and full of wonder – at least until he realised Ryuga had caught him, when he once again scrambled away with a whimper, getting caught in his own poncho and falling to the ground where he lay very still, prey before a predator. Enough was enough.

"Why are you here?" Ryuga asked, hearing the slightest wisp of L-Drago's growl in his own voice. "Why are you following me?"

The boy didn't say anything. _He fears us,_ L-Drago sang.

 _But he's still following us,_ Ryuga replied, keeping his eyes on the boy. Aloud he said "Answer me!"

"-tle-" the boy whispered. He was shaking from head to foot, and his eyes kept darting towards where his mask lay on the far side of the hollow, but Ryuga wasn't going to let him move, holding him in place with a glare.

"Speak up," Ryuga ordered, quickly losing patience and wishing he'd refused to let the boy stay by his fire the night before. Yes, the boy was a curiosity, but that wasn't worth the fuss he was causing now.

"I wanna battle you again."

It was such an unexpected answer that Ryuga even felt L-Drago rear back in surprise. "No," he replied automatically. Then: "You can't have followed me all this way just for that."

The boy sat up slowly now that the force of Ryuga's glare had lessened somewhat. "I never fought anyone as strong as you before," he said. "I… I want to fight more really good bladers. It's fun! You were _really_ scary, and I don't wanna fight you if you're scary, but it was still sort of fun. And you broke my special move, so I think if you weren't so scary it would be really fun. I want to see how you did it and then get better and stop you doing it again." He was gradually getting louder, as though the sound of his own voice was giving him confidence. "And I've been following you _all day_ and you walk _really_ fast. Can't we battle now, _please_? Just a short battle."

"No. I told you already, kid, I'm not fighting you again. I've got better things to do with my time than waste it on you."

The boy looked crestfallen. "But I don't know anyone else who's strong enough," he said. "Everyone else I fought lost really quickly, you're the first person who's beaten me."

That was… unusual, certainly. But Ryuga wasn't going to think about the implications of being the first to defeat this tiny boy too much. "Find your own way to the tournaments, if that's what you want to do," he snapped. "It's not my problem if you can't find good enough bladers to fight."

"So are you going to a tournament?"

"What makes you think that?"

"Because either you're going training and I want to train too so can I come and train with you or you're going to a big tournament because really good battlers like you are always going to big tournaments and I want to go so I can meet other good bladers and fight them to see if they're as good as you or not so can I come to that too?"

Ryuga had no idea how such a small body had held enough breath to say all that in one go. Seriously, where had the shy little thing that had cowered away from him last night – or even a minute ago – gone? He much preferred that one. At least that one was quiet.

"I told you," he said. "Make your own way there."

Having made what seemed to be his ultimate speech, the boy had subsided somewhat, pulling his knees up to his chest and tugging his mask close to him, though he didn't put it on. Instead, he just ducked his head so that he didn't have to look at Ryuga any more. "But I don't really know where it is and it's really dangerous to go on my own. I'm just a boy and there's lots of scary things out there. So can I… can I just follow you? Not go with you? You're extra scary so the scary things won't come near you. And I'm really shy but I know you so if I just stay close to you I won't have to see so many people. Just until we get to the big battle place, then I'll leave."

Ryuga wasn't entirely convinced that he liked the description of himself as "extra scary". It was perfectly obvious that if he said no, the boy was going to follow him anyway. The fact that he'd tracked him all the way here was enough to convince Ryuga that the only way to get rid of him altogether would be to flash away in lightning. How could a boy so small be strong enough to make him rely on such a technique just to stop him from following behind?

And there was something else too.

"You think you know me?" he asked with all the contempt he was capable of mustering. "You fought me for a couple of minutes and then followed me for a day and you think you _know me?_ You know _nothing._ "

The boy shook his head. "It's your power. When we fought, just before you broke my special move, it felt… familiar."

Ryuga hid the shock behind a mask of indifference. "I've never fought you before," he said. "I wouldn't waste my time fighting someone again that I've already battled."

"No, not like that. It felt like it was _my_ power, just in someone else. Like I'd always known it. Like I understood it, here inside where Quetzalcoatl gets his power from." And the boy pointed to the centre of his chest.

 _Could it be?_

He wasn't sure if that was his own thoughts or L-Drago's voice, but it didn't matter. Was it possible that this tiny scrap of a child really had been granted the same massive power from the heavens that L-Drago Destructor had? He couldn't deny that there was power in the boy's strange blade, but for it to fall on such a pathetic opponent destroyed all of Ryuga's current theories on the light choosing the most powerful bladers in the world.

But the boy _had_ managed to entrap L-Drago briefly, forcing Ryuga to use some of his real power. That alone placed him on a par with some of Gingka's stronger friends. So perhaps he wasn't as pathetic as he seemed. Running and hiding had never been to Ryuga's liking, but the boy wouldn't be the first blader he'd seen attempting to use those tactics.

Maybe watching him battling other bladers would give Ryuga a better idea of the exact extent of his strength. Letting the boy follow him to the tournament might not be such a terrible idea in that case. Besides, it wasn't as if he would ever win a tournament that Ryuga entered. The rumour of a star fallen from the heavens hidden in a tower in the middle of the desert, offered as a prize to the victor, would never go to him. That power would be all Ryuga's, to have and to know and to understand.

And if the boy's power _was_ the same as the power that had arced into Ryuga's blade all those nights ago, perhaps this would be the thing that confirmed it for once and for all.

 _I want to see that creature of his again,_ L-Drago said. _It should have burned up in my fire, but it did not. I want to find out why._

 _You laugh at me for wanting to know things and yet you're just as bad as I am,_ Ryuga muttered, but he couldn't help the fondness creeping into his thoughts. "Do what you want, kid," he said aloud, coming to a decision. "If you really want to follow me, I don't care. If you can't keep up I'm not waiting for you. You look after yourself, get your own food, make and break your own camp. I'm not doing the work for you. And I'm not battling you. If you want to fight me again, make it through the tournament."

A tiny part of him was expecting the massive, beaming smile he had been given the previous night, but instead the boy just nodded and clutched his mask closer to his knees. "Um… which tournament is it that you're going to?" he asked after a moment.

Ryuga tucked L-Drago Destructor away into its case and pulled a cooked fish out of the fire. "It's in the desert," he said. "They're calling it the Babel Tower Battle Royale."

"Is that the one with the legendary bey with the star on it as a prize?"

"Star _in_ it, not on it. And how do you know about that?"

The boy shrugged. "There wasn't any food I could find on the mountain so I went down to the village to get some and they were talking about it. But they all ran away when they saw me so I didn't find out where it was." He looked sad suddenly. "Nobody ever wants to play with me."

Ryuga decided it was not worth his time to point out that the monstrous mask might have something to do with the lack of opponents the boy was finding, and started eating the fish.

It had been a long and very strange day. Tomorrow, to Ryuga's mixed dismay and delight, looked like it might be stranger still.


	3. Chapter 3

_Ahahaha writing this chapter was not an enjoyable process. IT'S SO LONG. I'VE ACTUALLY CUT IT ALMOST IN HALF FROM THE ORIGINAL PLAN. WHY DID I WRITE THE CHAPTER PLAN LIKE THIS. SILLY JUNIPER._

 _Ahem._

* * *

 _To my guest reviewer from Falling Veils: Hi! Thank you for your kind words, I'm so pleased you enjoyed them. To answer your question, Falling Veils was a one-month challenge fic – one one-shot uploaded every day – which was started and completed in February 2014. So once it was completed there was never any intention of adding anything to it. It's a finished story at it stands now._

 _If you want to talk about it more, please don't hesitate to private-message me! I'm always happy to discuss things like this._

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

Waking up was always an interesting process.

Apparently L-Drago was even less trusting than Ryuga, or perhaps was feeling a little guilty for his lack of observation the previous lunchtime, and had stayed awake and on-watch all night, because the only part of Ryuga that was warm was his left arm directly under the golden brace that held his bey. With the fire long out and the embers cold, Ryuga directed a wordless complaint at his dragon until L-Drago relented and sent a pulse of heat out from Ryuga's core.

 _So, was he any danger?_ Ryuga asked, somewhat grumpily, as the warmth slowly chased out the chill.

 _No,_ L-Drago muttered, seeming quite put out. _He is awake, though._

Ryuga opened his eyes just enough to see the boy rummaging through a backpack. His fire pit – or fire mound, Ryuga supposed – seemed to still have fuel in it, little flickers of heat showing through the gaps in the stones. A loud _pop_ suggested the boy was cooking leftover hazelnuts.

Still silently complaining about the decided lack of warmth, Ryuga sat up. The boy looked up sharply at the movement, immediately averting his eyes when he realised Ryuga was staring, but he didn't flinch back as he had done the night before. Well, it would get boring and very, very annoying if the boy ran away every time he caught his eye, Ryuga supposed. Then he looked down.

There was a mound of steaming hazelnuts next to his dead fire.

"What are these?" Ryuga asked aloud, just as L-Drago pulled out the memory of roasted hazelnuts from the night before and reacted with delight. The boy looked up again, slower and more carefully this time.

"They're for you," he said. "Your fire went out and I thought as you're letting me come with you I should help with the food because you showed me where to get the food so it's fair now. Um. Is that… not okay?"

 _L-Drago,_ Ryuga growled. _You let him approach and you didn't wake me up?_

 _He had hazelnuts for you,_ L-Drago protested lazily. _And he left his bey on his side of the camp, he wasn't going to attack you. I would have woken you up if he'd had his bey._

 _You are a useless guard-dragon,_ Ryuga sighed, but he didn't mean it. "Do what you like, kid," he said out loud, picking up the top hazelnut and popping it into his mouth. It was good, almost as good as if he'd done it. Looked like the boy had some level of skill here too. How very, very curious.

To his surprise and slight concern, Ryuga found himself almost enthusiastic about the idea that someone so strange and intriguing was following him. It would certainly make the miles more interesting.

.

With the camp broken down, water bottles refilled at the stream and L-Drago offering a hint of a direction, Ryuga set off through the bottom of the valley towards the desert. Despite the fact that it was easier terrain, he moved slower, though still not quite slow enough for his follower to keep up. The boy had slung his massive mask onto his back and was doing his best to keep Ryuga within view, but his legs were just too short. By lunchtime, he was out of sight. Ryuga wasn't too worried. The boy was responsible for his own path – he just happened to be following Ryuga's. When he asked L-Drago where the boy was out of curiosity, his dragon just grumbled and went back to sleep.

With desert-crossing to come, Ryuga kept a sharp eye out for any kind of food he could gather. Back when he was first learning how to travel alone with L-Drago, he had regularly gone hungry upon reaching difficult areas where even his dragon's sense of surrounding life couldn't always help. Of course, he now considered that to be all part of the training too, but it was much harder to keep L-Drago's will under control with an empty stomach.

He was in luck. As the stream vanished into the sands right at the edge of the desert, it poured into one last pool, choked with reeds and algae. Ryuga vaguely recognised the reeds as ones with edible roots, and waded into the shallow mud to investigate.

The plants came out of the mud easily, so he gathered a couple of handfuls before taking them to the far side of the pool to rinse the dirt off. The roots were sizeable, enough to provide food for a couple of days at least. With their long stems, he could simply tie them to his belt and not have to worry about carrying anything either. They'd be dried out by dinner time.

 _No! Not those!_ L-Drago's voice was suddenly loud and almost panicked in his head, filling all of his awareness. _Those are poisonous, Ryuga!_

Ryuga dropped the bundle immediately, trusting L-Drago's millennia of knowledge over his own experience. _I thought we found these before, last week?_

 _Not those ones,_ L-Drago said. _See the leaves? The all-green ones are the ones we found before. You can eat those. But the ones with a white underside are a very poisonous variety. It would kill you unless I did something to help._

 _Noted,_ Ryuga murmured, carefully examining the pile he'd dropped and pulling out the stems with the white-sided leaves, scattering them far from the edible ones. _Thank you._

 _I've put too much work into you to lose you to a root vegetable,_ L-Drago said, his voice warm in a way it so rarely was, and Ryuga briefly allowed him to lean into his mind, pleased and surprised by the outright declaration of protection.

The rest of the afternoon passed without much to remark on. The desert spilled out in front of him, flat and featureless to unfamiliar eyes, and Ryuga found himself relying on L-Drago's slight nudges to make sure he was definitely travelling in the right direction once the sun had slipped behind the mountains at his back. It would be easier and cooler to travel at night, but finding shelter against the heat of the day was much harder than finding somewhere to sleep at night (no fear of being cold with L-Drago curling through his veins). With so little of his attention needed to follow the path, Ryuga found himself letting his mind wander back about a hundred yards to where his dogged follower was still trudging along with them. He wasn't quite out of sight any more – the desert was flat and the boy would have to be a long way behind for Ryuga to lose him completely.

The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that the boy couldn't possibly have the same heaven-sent power that he had. He couldn't deny that the boy had managed to halt his attack, but he wasn't the first opponent that Ryuga had briefly underestimated. But, as usual, the underestimation had lasted only seconds before Ryuga's clearly-superior power had overwhelmed him. As for the boy claiming their power felt the same – he'd obviously never fought any opponent of any significant ability, so he must just have recognised the feeling of being pushed back for once.

So the next question was what exactly _was_ the power? Ryuga remembered the flash of light and the flames that burned without heat very clearly, but he was certain that just before the light had come to him, he had seen other lights streaking across the sky, higher and faster than his. Certain enough that he had left the island he'd been training on to find out where they might have gone.

The bey offered as a prize in the tournament had to be the one he had been tracking. _Star-touched_ , the adverts had called it. That had to be what he was looking for. Once he had it in his possession, maybe then he could start to understand exactly what it was he had been given control of. Was it simply a change in the shape of the blade, morphing to hold an additional source of power, or could it be something more?

As his thoughts turned inwards to consider the implications of being gifted power by the stars themselves, and possibly not being alone in that honour, L-Drago began to stir again, pulling insistently north. He wanted to reach the battlefield as much as Ryuga did, both of them moving forwards with the desire to fight again.

It wasn't always like this. There were days when every move was an effort and a battle against the will of a dragon that was not perfectly aligned with his own, fighting an alien consciousness for control. And then there were days like this one, when they walked side-by-side with the same purpose. There were battles when their wills matched and compromised, and man and dragon pushed with equal force for their goals.

But only once had their wills truly become one, in the pre-dawn darkness on top of a tower with a white, winged horse the sole thing standing between them and total victory – and total destruction. Only once had the man from Earth and the dragon from the stars wanted exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason. Only once had they been of one being and mind.

And Ryuga was never going to allow that to happen again.

The light was fading fast now, and the closest thing to shelter that was visible anywhere was a small collection of rocks about half a mile to the west. Ignoring L-Drago's tugging until the dragon got the idea that Ryuga wasn't going to spend the whole night walking, Ryuga changed direction. The rocks were already cooling from the heat of the day by the time he arrived, and it was easy enough to get his campsite set up before the boy had even reached the area. Ignoring his follower pattering around the camp, Ryuga unclipped L-Drago Destructor from the golden brace and launched it into a slow, steady spin in front of him.

Time to focus. Eyes open, Ryuga let his dragon drift closer, binding them together into one.

 _Here I am._

 _Here you are._

 _Here we shall be._

The boy moved across his line of sight, carrying a bunch of collected greenery in one hand, clearly his dinner. Ryuga shook his head and refocused. Ignore him. If he was going to be ready for battle tomorrow, his first real battle with L-Drago Destructor, he needed to know the blade and the beast within it from the inside out.

 _Ignore the boy. All that exist_ _s_ _is you, and me. Breathe with me, let the night seep into your lungs._ _Listen with me, let the universe enter your blood. Taste with me, the desert is a feast for us._

 _One yet two. Apart yet together. That is how it should be._

 _Our thoughts entwine. Our hearts' desire is battle. Our goal is strength._

 _To fight, to win, to conquer, to -_

Something pulled at Ryuga's attention, something wrong with what he could see in front of him. But he was safe. L-Drago was spinning steadily, his red-gold glow expanding through the rocks like the dawn after dark. Nothing could hurt him here, with his dragon watching over him and the stones at his back.

Despite himself, his gaze slid sideways to the boy. Surely he couldn't be a threat, not now? No, the boy was stripping the leaves from the greenery he had been carrying, preparing them to eat. He wasn't paying any attention to Ryuga. But the feeling of _warning_ just intensified. Whatever was wrong, it was getting worse. Something was wrong, something about the boy… no, not the boy. The reeds he was holding.

The stems were long and thin, and the leaves were white on the underside.

"Don't eat that!" The words left Ryuga's mouth before he'd had a chance to think about them. "That's poisonous!"

The boy froze, dropping the root immediately, eyes wide with horror. "But… but you gathered it, I saw where you -"

Oh. That wasn't what he had expected at all. L-Drago Destructor clattered to a halt, its master's attention and focus removed, but Ryuga ignored it for once. "They were all mixed together in the clump when I pulled them up. The green-leaved ones are fine. I left the white-leaved ones behind." He wasn't going to admit his own mistake, after all. Not to this almost-stranger.

"Oh. Um." The boy looked down at his hands. "But I... don't have anything else to eat."

Ryuga somehow resisted the temptation to roll his eyes and leaned forwards to pick up his blade. How had this suddenly become his problem? "Then you'd better find something pretty quick," he said.

Or at least that was what he _intended_ to say. What actually came out of his mouth was "Here. Take this," as he reached for the bundle tied to his belt and handed the boy the last of the tubers he had gathered the day before.

 _Ryuga,_ L-Drago breathed, a half-laugh in his voice that wasn't quite firm enough for disapproval. _Oh, my Ryuga._

Ryuga ignored them both, stiffening his shoulders and turning away from the wide-eyed boy stammering his thanks. It was simply a repayment to cancel out the mistake he had made, that was all. A simple case of an accidental debt accrued and repaid. No need to make a fuss about it. But he kept his eyes averted from the other side of the camp until long after he was certain the boy was asleep.

Ryuga himself didn't feel any need to sleep, not tonight. It wasn't a night for sleeping. It was a night for lying under the wheeling stars and listening for the song of the universe that he was still only just beginning to learn. There was something about the desert that brought every nerve crackling to life. L-Drago gloried in the wide expanses where he could reach the fullest extent of his powers, and the line between man and dragon was inevitably blurred a little more than usual when so much of the desert night could only be detected through a dragon's senses. It was almost too easy to fall back into the slow, measured breathing of meditation, to let the dry heat of the day wash from him to be replaced with the steady fire of his dragon. This was as close to a feeling of _home_ as he ever got, the soul of the man and the soul of the dragon leaning towards each other in communion.

 _You helped him,_ L-Drago whispered as silence surrounded them, thoughts drifting lazily between them. _I thought we were only letting him follow us, not interfering._

 _He copied me,_ Ryuga said. _He gathered the reeds where I did. I only knew they were poisonous because you told me, or I'd be dead too. So if he got hurt by copying a mistake I made, it's on me because I made the mistake first. So I repaid the debt._

It made sense to him, at least. But L-Drago simply laughed at him and curled up in his mind again _._ Ryuga closed his eyes and listened, content just to be himself for a while. There were worse things to do – or to be – on a night as beautiful as this.

He didn't actually notice when the sounds of the desert faded into his dreams.

.

Even though L-Drago hadn't really said anything about it, the next day Ryuga found himself walking just slow enough that the boy could keep up, trailing behind them by only a few feet. If the boy was going to copy his every move, Ryuga would rather he didn't copy the ones that Ryuga didn't mean to make, and if that meant keeping the boy within view all day, so be it.

As it turned out, they had been closer to the tournament than Ryuga had expected. Before mid-morning a tall tower began to sprout on the horizon, and by midday they were close enough to see the streams of people entering the remote stadium.

"Is that it?" the boy asked as Ryuga halted on the edge of a dune about half a mile from the stadium. "It's way bigger than I thought! This is so cool! I can't wait to battle someone."

Ryuga made no answer, privately wondering when the shyer side of the boy's personality would realise how many strangers were in the tournament he was so desperate to join. But the boy didn't seem to be thinking about that at all as he pushed past Ryuga and scampered down the side of the dune towards the entrance. Ryuga just rolled his eyes and followed behind at his normal pace.

By the time he joined the crowd around the stadium, the boy had vanished. Not that it was particularly surprising – the kid was tiny, and most of the bladers here were probably twice his age, let alone height. Besides, the crowd was huge. With the promise of some Babylonian blader-warrior with a star-touched bey as the reward, it was no surprise that it had pulled in bladers from far and wide. Everyone knew the old story of the stars that fell from the sky to be made into beyblades of especial power and magnificence. None of them would be able to take it from him, of course. He was the Dragon Emperor. The stars themselves would bow down to him.

The person registering entries was completely useless, knocking over his entire pot of pens, dropping the stack of entrance forms, and generally making a fool of himself as he realised exactly who it was standing in front of him. Good to know that his reputation preceded him even here.

The bladers knew who he was too, or at least enough of them did that the ones who did not immediately step back when he moved forwards to take his rightful place at the front of the group were dragged out of his way by their friends. L-Drago preened, pleased with the attention even if it wasn't strictly for him. Underneath the preening, though, was a rumbling hunger for battle, for fire and retribution and destruction.

"Whoa! I don't believe it! It's Ryuga himself!" And now the commentator had noticed him too. "Does this mean that the amazing Ryuga is going to participate too? This battle is going to be on a whole other level! Hold onto your hats, people, this is going to be wild!"

Ryuga was distracted momentarily from the uneasy murmurs that rose up in the wake of that announcement by the sudden appearance of his follower from behind a small clump of bladers who were all wearing identical jackets – clearly they had all come together. Or rather, the sudden appearance of the mask. Looked like the boy had worked out how many strangers were there at last.

"Snap out of it, people!" That was the commentator again. The crowd's attention shifted back to the tower, the tension in the arena rising sharply as everyone suddenly realised that the tournament was about to start. "All right, let's get this party started! The Babel Tower Battle Royale is on – THREE! TWO! ONE! GO! RUN FOR IT!"

Ryuga had no interest in wasting time and energy trying to run to the top of the tower. Much better to watch everyone else battle their way up and then face the victor at the top. L-Drago was fully capable of carrying him up there in a few seconds, after all. Stone was no match for a dragon.

As the crowd surged past him, carrying the boy and his mask with it, Ryuga thought he caught a glimpse of someone familiar – a flash of silver hair flicking away behind a tall, dark-skinned girl. But it was gone in the next instant, as was the majority of the crowd, all of them swirling up the slopes of the tower. Now to wait and see who made it to the top first, and whether they would be worthy of his attention.

Clashes of metal and flashes of light and smoke were already billowing from the tower as some bladers held onto the high ground as they ran, and others tried to push past. It was the sort of battle that Gingka would have liked, Ryuga mused – big, loud, slightly off-kilter, and with equal chance of running into someone who had just picked up a blade for the first time that morning or a world champion. Not that Gingka was here. L-Drago would have known if Pegasus was anywhere in that crowd. The idea of facing Gingka once more, this time with the massive power contained within L-Drago Destructor, was one that both dragon and man were very determined to bring to pass. There was no-one else in the world capable of matching him, even for a moment.

A cataclysmic explosion snapped Ryuga's attention back to the battles going on in front of him, just as an enormous, cream-coloured winged serpent erupted from the west side of the tower. _The boy,_ L-Drago purred, focus entirely on the other creature. _He has gone far, almost at the top._ Then a pause. _I wonder who he is fighting._

 _Do you want to go and see?_

The response was less an audible reply and more a rushing sensation in Ryuga's chest, a breathtaking desire to revel in battle once more. Ryuga was more than willing to go along with it.

He barely noticed when the darkness beneath the tower's entrance swallowed them, already aligning his will with L-Drago's as the dragon gathered his strength for the jump to the top of the tower – why bother pushing past the mediocre bladers who had already failed when the one they had both been intrigued by was already so high up? They would get there ahead of the boy and wait. If he got there victorious, maybe they would even battle him before taking the star-filled bey of the Babylonian blader-warrior to see if it compared to their power.

Lightning crackled, fire sparked, and with a shriek of stone the core of the tower blew apart as they hurtled towards the top floor, punching their way through each level as easily as ripping through paper. Wrapped in dragonfire, Ryuga let his dragon carry him through unafraid. Briefly he wondered if it would have felt the same to rip through Spiral City, to be _they_ instead of _he_ and feel the same visceral joy in tearing apart everything Dark Nebula had ever created and all the evidence of their past mistakes. But then L-Drago dropped him lightly on the very top level of the tower at the edge of the hole they had made, and once more his thoughts focused on the present.

Apparently a few bladers had reached the top much faster than he had predicted, but he didn't care about them. They were so weak that even the appearance of L-Drago had blown them all off of the top level and back onto the slopes of the tower, their battered and scratched beys tumbling down beside them.

But there was one blader still standing, arriving at the top almost simultaneously with Ryuga. Despite the dust and smoke and confusion, his expression was clear and focused, a warrior of true strength and power.

Hah. He'd been right. He _had_ seen someone familiar in the crowd.

"So it's you, Tsubasa."

It had been a while since the owner of Earth Eagle had stood in front of him. The last time, the young man's body and spirit had been collapsing under the onslaught from the Darkness. Now he stood tall and strong and proud, spirit burning to prove itself against all comers. Quite the change. Nice to know that he had actually listened to Ryuga's advice.

On the other hand, he was standing between Ryuga and the Babylonian blader-warrior with his star-filled bey, and that wouldn't do at all.

"Get lost," Ryuga said, and wasn't sure whether to be proud or disappointed that Tsubasa didn't even flinch. "I won't hand over that bey to you or anyone!"

"I'm not asking you to," Tsubasa shot back. "I'm taking the star fragment for myself."

 _Star fragment?_ L-Drago echoed Ryuga's thoughts with a thrill of interest. _He did not say anything about the bey? What is this? What does he know?_

"What are you blabbering on about now?" Ryuga asked aloud. "What's this star fragment business?"

For just a moment, Tsubasa looked surprised. "You don't know about it?" he asked, and then his expression changed to one that was – _hopeful_. "So you don't have it. Gingka thought you might, but if he was wrong… maybe I can..." He trailed off.

"You're babbling," Ryuga snapped. "Talk sense, or get lost."

Tsubasa drew himself up to his full height, one of the few people who could do that and equal Ryuga. "Battle me, Ryuga!"

Oh now this was getting interesting again. Tsubasa knew how powerful Ryuga was, and he never charged into battle recklessly. So for him to even consider battling him, he must think he had something Ryuga didn't have – training or power or technique. He was going to be _very_ disappointed.

Besides, wasn't this what Ryuga had wanted from the beginning, really? A chance to battle _real_ bladers, not the pathetic excuses that had been thrown from the tower by his mere appearance.

"If I beat you, you tell me what I want to know," he suggested. "If you beat me, I'll let you have the bey in there." It was quite a generous offer, though of course Tsubasa could never beat his L-Drago Destructor. "Deal?"

"Fine," Tsubasa growled, pointing Earth Eagle in its launcher straight at him. "I'm going to stop you here and now!"

No, he wouldn't. "Three!"

"Two!"

"One!"

" _LET IT RIP!"_

He remembered battling Earth Eagle only vaguely. There was a veil of purple-black over his memory of their fight – or had it been fights? - and he was very reluctant to delve too far into thoughts of Battle Bladers. Oh well. It didn't look like the blade had been modified at all since then, which meant it would be several levels of power below L-Drago Destructor.

What a shame. He had been looking forward to showing off L-Drago's new special move.

"L-Drago!"

His dragon howled with delight at being in a proper battle again and pounced. Earth Eagle was a heavy blade that was unusually fast and agile, but that was nothing to the Flat performance tip couldn't counter. With the metal dragons around the edge of L-Drago Destructor engaged, every strike would have enough power to push the heavier opponent off-balance, and as long as Earth Eagle remained grounded, there was nothing to fear from its attack.

This was going to be _easy._

"Eagle!"

The purple blade curled away from L-Drago Destructor before reversing into a sweeping attack. This felt… different. Ryuga vaguely recalled a feeling of dissatisfaction from fighting Eagle before, which suggested Tsubasa had spent a lot of time running away. Maybe he did have something new to show Ryuga, then.

"Is that all you've got?" he taunted, letting his blade take the brunt of the attack and absorb its power. "An attack like that won't do anything to me!"

Tsubasa glared. "You haven't seen anything yet. Eagle – _Metal Wing Smash!_ "

Oh yes. Tsubasa was the one with more special moves than he really deserved. Ryuga didn't care. _He_ only needed one. Besides, Eagle was still earthbound, and therefore vulnerable. L-Drago Destructor held its ground against the whirling purple attack, supported by the Flat performance tip. Really, this was getting boring.

Not for Tsubasa, apparently. "What _is_ that bey?" he gasped as Eagle reeled back from the clash. "That's not Meteo L-Drago!"

Ryuga grinned. So he'd finally noticed. "L-Drago Destructor," he said smugly, and was secretly delighted when Tsubasa's eyes went wide.

"You upgraded it again?" he asked. "But… but _why?_ You've already got so much power, why would you need more unless you're… but no..." He stopped and stared, focus drifting from the battle momentarily. Ryuga took advantage of that, and L-Drago Destructor forced Earth Eagle back nearly a foot before Tsubasa managed to scramble some sort of defence into place. There could be no doubt about it. Tsubasa knew something important, something Ryuga wanted to know.

"If you're going after the power of the Star, I don't have a choice. I'm going to stop you, hear me!"

"Stop _me?"_ Ryuga laughed. "You're dreaming. You can't hope to challenge me." To prove his point, L-Drago Destructor whipped around in a circle around Earth Eagle, fire spreading in its wake. Caught in the updraught, Earth Eagle was thrown high into the air, tumbling helplessly in the power of the dragon it had foolishly challenged.

Tsubasa pulled himself up to his full height, arms spread as wide as an eagle's wings. "I know your strength, Ryuga! I've seen your darkness and walked through it just as you did, and came out stronger than before. And I'll prove it to you! This is the special move created in the depths of Hades! Eagle! _Shining Tornado Buster!_ "

The outrageousness of that statement made Ryuga _burn_. This fool really thought he'd seen Hades? And had the audacity to say that to _Ryuga?_ "Your so-called Hades is nothing compared to what I've seen! You never faced the Darkness itself, never felt its claws in your chest, never saw it rip your thoughts apart! What you saw was the first edges of twilight compared to what I've been through! L-DRAGO!"

"Huh? What now?"

The rush of power as L-Drago rose to meet Eagle would have been exhilarating if he hadn't been so angry. What was it with Gingka's friends thinking they could _understand_ him? Ryuga didn't want to be understood. He wanted to be _feared._

"Oh wow! You're battling! This is so much fun, let me play too please pretty please!"

What.

"Go Quetzalcoatl!"

"What? Who's that?"

Between L-Drago Destructor and Earth Eagle was a strangely familiar yellow bey. There, next to Tsubasa, stood the boy, still wearing his mask. Somehow he had fought his way all the top of the tower, and had launched himself straight into the battle.

It was the last straw. Ryuga's rage catalysed with L-Drago's desire for destruction, and he roared his best and final attack to the heavens. "L-Drago! _Ultimate Move!_ _Dragon Emperor:_ _Life Destructor!_ "

A pillar of fire screamed into the sky, coiling into the shape of a terrible dragon that picked up both Earth Eagle and the yellow Quetzalcoatl in its jaws. Fuelled by every ounce of skill and talent Ryuga had honed over the years and years of training to become one with blade and beast and the vast power of the cosmos that lay between them, L-Drago hurled both blades far into the air, lifting them out of the pathetic reach of their owners, catapulting them towards the distant mountains and crushing them against the rock walls so many miles away with as much effort as it would have taken to push one of them off the tower.

"No, Eagle!"

"Quetzalcoatl!"

The wind died.

The smoke settled.

And only L-Drago Destructor was left on the top of the tower.

Tsubasa gasped as if he had been winded and collapsed to his knees. "Amazing," he whispered. "So that's it. That's the power."

Ryuga wasn't going to deny that using his ultimate move in battle at last had cheered him up a little bit. He wasn't quite as angry, anyway. "What power?" he asked.

"You have it, don't you?" Tsubasa looked up at him. "The power of the Star Fragment. You must do. There's no other explanation for it. You're one of the Legendary Bladers."

Legendary _what?_ Ryuga took a deep breath as L-Drago curled back into his space in Ryuga's mind, satisfied with a job well done, and the blade leapt back into his hand. "You said you'd explain when you lost. Go on."

"That's not what… fine." Tsubasa looked… tired. Worn. In fairness, he had a two-day trek ahead of him to get his blade back, but that wasn't entirely Ryuga's fault. He could blame the boy for interfering and making Ryuga angry enough to use his best attack. "It happened about three weeks ago, at night. A star – a meteor – arrived at Earth. It split into ten pieces, each of them coming to a blader and entering their bey. The beys that were touched by the star morphed and evolved, and are now much stronger than before. So far, I know of four people with beys like that – Gingka, Kyouya, a young astronomer called Yuki, and a man called Aguma. And now you. So that's five. And this Babylonian blader-warrior's bey, so maybe six."

He had been right. The light _had_ split, and gone to others beside him. Somehow it was no surprise at all that Gingka Hagane and Kyouya Tategami had managed to wrangle a part of this new power for themselves. They seemed to get everywhere, those two. But Ryuga had never heard of the other two. And as for the Babylonian warrior...

That reminded him. "Come out!" he called, loud enough to be heard inside the little hut on the top of the tower. "Face me!"

There was the sound of a loud scuffle, a panicked clattering at a door handle, and then the door flew open. "Wait, stop, please!"

The Babylonian blader-warrior was... young. Too young. The helmet was in great danger of slipping over his eyes as he dashed out, barely avoiding tripping on the ends of his too-long cape, hands held out placatingly towards Ryuga and Tsubasa. His eyes were wide and terrified and innocent – this was not someone who had trained for hours in the harshest conditions to get to his exalted position. Ryuga felt a wave of something he could only describe as disgust rise up inside him.

"You're not a warrior," he said, and the 'warrior' shook his head desperately.

"They never told me I'd be facing bladers like Ryuga and Tsubasa!" he wailed. "I'm just a local champion from the nearby town, they brought me in to act as the big tough challenge at the top. All I had to do was give the last battler a good fight and then lose to them so they could take home the bey as a prize. It was supposed to make the tournament more exciting! But I could never fight bladers like you two!"

All that, and a rigged battle at the end to boot? Ryuga felt the disgust morph into rage. This wasn't blading. This was _showmanship._

"And the blade?" Tsubasa asked from behind him. "The Treasure with the light of a star?"

"Oh! You can have that if you want, I'll give it to you!" The 'warrior' dug into a pocket and pulled out a small yellow and black blade – Ryuga's sharp eyes immediately picked up the jagged metal frame that marked a Corvus blade – and held it out. But his hands were shaking so badly that the blade dropped from them, clattering across the stone to come to rest just in front of Ryuga.

Afterwards, Ryuga wasn't quite sure why he did it. Perhaps it was the fact that he hadn't found what he was looking for and more than a week of travelling through mountains and deserts had been completely wasted. Perhaps it was left-over anger from the intrusion of the boy and Tsubasa's arrogant assumption that because he'd briefly let the Darkness rule him, he had seen the full extent of its terrible power. Perhaps it was just the fact that there were tournaments like this one that didn't celebrate the true heart of blading.

Whatever it was, it didn't really matter. Ryuga lifted his foot and slammed his heel onto the little metal bey in front of him.

It shattered underneath his boot. There wasn't even the power of a simple constellation in it – it was nothing more than a customised version of the blades that could be bought in any blading store. High quality for an amateur, perhaps, but nothing more than dross to someone like the Dragon Emperor.

For just an instant, Ryuga entertained the thought of what he'd like to do to this 'warrior' if the natural laws of blading didn't prevent him from launching his bey at an unarmed opponent. He was barely aware of L-Drago's snarl building in his throat as he stared down at the quivering wreck at his feet. " _You have wasted a lot of my time_."

The 'warrior' scrambled backwards, terror clear in his eyes as he fled from the wrath of the Dragon Emperor. There was a yelp as he tumbled off the top floor of the tower and onto the sloping path below, but as the sound of feet running downwards followed soon afterwards, Ryuga was fairly certain he wasn't permanently injured. It was almost a shame.

With an effort, he calmed L-Drago, who was offering to go and make sure the 'warrior' was definitely hurt. _Outside of battle,_ Ryuga reminded both his dragon and himself. _We must not attack others outside of battle. That is not the way of the warrior. That is not the way of the_ _Dragon_ _Emperor._

 _Oh very well._

This truly had been a colossal waste of time. The only useful thing that had come out of this was Tsubasa, who was now staring at Ryuga with a resigned expression. Next to him, however, the boy was peering over the top of his mask, eyes wide and horrified at the violence. Ryuga didn't really care.

"Talk," he said sharply, and Tsubasa sighed.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

"Start at the beginning," Ryuga suggested acidly. "What makes you think I'm one of these Legendary Bladers?"

Tsubasa shrugged. "The power increase, though to be fair, that could just be you – it wouldn't be the first time. And the new blade." He frowned. "Though you've done that on your own before too, so… there's one more thing. Gingka, Yuki and Kyouya said there was a bright flash of light that fell on their beys about three weeks ago. It would have been in the middle of the night. Did you see anything like that?"

So the light _was_ related. "Yes, back on the island. So?"

"Then it's certain. You're a Legendary Blader, just like them. The Star fell on L-Drago and chose you to take part in the battle."

Battle? Normally that would be an excellent thing to hear – more power meant better battles, after all – but this sounded as if he was once again going to get caught up in Gingka's business. Was the wielder of Pegasus completely helpless without him?

"I saw a bright light too!"

Wait, _what_?

"Who are you?" Tsubasa asked, surprised, and the masked boy immediately ducked behind Ryuga's legs.

 _Ryuga_. _We are being used as a shield by a small child._

 _I can see, L-Drago. You don't need to tell me._

"I'm… I'm Tithi," the boy said, peering out. "A bright light fell on Quetzalcoatl too, and then he change shape! Does that mean I'm a Legendary Blader?"

Tsubasa stared. So did Ryuga. Impossible. This… _child_ couldn't possibly be on the same level as Gingka Hagane and Kyouya Tategami, let alone Ryuga himself. What right did he have to the starlight?

"Probably," said Tsubasa faintly. "The falling light is the major sign, but… _two_ of you… I never imagined this would happen. I came here to see if I could become one myself, not find two more." He looked at Ryuga. "He's with you? That's not something I expected either."

"We were walking in the same direction," Ryuga shrugged, stepping away from the cowering boy. "That's all."

Tsubasa didn't look especially convinced, but before he could ask another question, the boy piped up "What is a Legendary Blader, Mr Eagle man?"

"Someone with the power granted to them by the Star that fell to the earth," Tsubasa said. "I don't know much about the process. Yuki – the astronomer I mentioned – is the one who knows the most. He said there was a purpose to the Star splitting and coming to ten different bladers across the planet. There is a great evil coming, and the Legendary Bladers have to stand against it. That's why they've been given the power."

That was _ridiculous._ "A great evil?" Ryuga laughed. "What nonsense is that?"

"I don't know. I told you, Yuki is the one who knows about it. You'd have to come with me and ask him if you want to know all the answers."

Like that was ever going to happen. "Why should I believe in some 'great evil' just because you tell me some random astronomer I've never heard of says it's coming?"

"He's been studying this for years, apparently. And he's a Legendary Blader too. I've watched the video of him awakening myself."

"Awakening?" That was a new one.

"His blade morphed in the middle of a battle. I'd show you, but there isn't exactly a screen out here. If you really want more credentials, though, he's descended from Koma Village, like Gingka."

Ah. Now that _did_ change things slightly. Koma Village was one of the few places that Ryuga actually respected – it was where Pegasus had come from, as well as L-Drago's old resting place. Even knowing of its existence suggested some measure of trust, and knowledge of the oldest and most sacred legends of beyblading history, like the ones that had led him to his dragon. "You're skipping bits. Tell me from the beginning."

Tsubasa stood up. "Can I at least go and get my blade back?"

It was so tempting to say no. But then Tsubasa might just leave anyway, and all the information he had would walk off with him. "Fine. Do what you want."

 _The boy,_ L-Drago said suddenly. _What are we going to do about the boy?_

That was an excellent point. Ryuga had been all set to leave the boy on top of the tower, letting him go his own way now that their unexpected truce was at an end. But if the boy really did have the same power that Ryuga did, that changed everything. What better way to observe the interactions between bladers with the same heaven-sent power than to have one already with him?

"You," Ryuga said, turning on the boy. "With me. Now." The boy blinked at him, and Ryuga scowled. "I said, you're with me. If you really are a Legendary Blader, whatever that is, I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"Ryuga..." Tsubasa began, but Ryuga ignored him in favour of watching the boy, who peeped over the top of his mask with an expression that could only be described as _delighted._

"Really?" he asked. "I can stay?"

Ryuga suddenly wondered if he was about to make another mistake. "At least until I know what's going on," he said. "You've got something I want, so for now you're useful to me."

The boy didn't seem to care that he was just a means to an end. He beamed at Ryuga, the same huge smile from the first night. "Thank you, Mr Ryuga!"

Okay, that was going to get annoying really quickly.

"And… um, if I'm going to be going with you now… can we go and get my blade first? It's stuck in that mountain where you threw it."

For the first and only time, Ryuga slightly regretted having used his ultimate move. Now he had no choice but to go with Tsubasa and the boy all the way to the far mountains. Another waste of his time, but at least this one might give him some more information.

He turned to Tsubasa. "You can go and get your blade," he said. "Both of you. But I'm coming with you until you've told me everything. This 'great evil' thing is nonsense, but if any of this involves Gingka Hagane, it's probably a lot bigger than anyone thinks."

Tsubasa gave him a long, measured look. "Then you think the same way I do," he said. "I've seen enough that I believe Yuki, but even if I didn't, the fact that something happened to Pegasus means it's going to be something big. Gingka always seems to find himself involved in the biggest messes he can." He almost smiled. "All of them seem to involve you too."

Ryuga scowled. That was _not_ something he needed to be reminded of. "I'm not coming to anyone's rescue," he snarled. "I've had enough of covering for you – _especially_ you. All I want is that power. Got that?"

Perhaps this time he wouldn't have to deal with too many of Gingka's friends. But the little voice in his head that wasn't quite L-Drago and wasn't really him either was beginning to warn that anything big enough to already involve Gingka Hagane, Kyouya Tategami _and_ Ryuga was going to pull all of them together in a way he really didn't want to get involved with.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"So are you going to start talking, or am I going to have to make you?"

The little group had been walking for about five minutes when Ryuga finally lost patience. It had been difficult enough to get away from the tournament organisers, two of whom wanted to scold him for destroying their prize (Ryuga had rightly pointed out that he had won, therefore the blade was his, and therefore he could do what he wanted to it) as well as a large proportion of the battle tower itself, one of whom wanted him to apologise for terrifying their "blader-warrior" (Ryuga? Apologise? Hah), and one of whom tried to get him to have his photograph taken for the local paper, as if _that_ was ever going to happen. But eventually the trio had made it out to begin the long trek towards the mountains.

"I've told you the basics already," Tsubasa said. "Star comes to Earth, Star splits into ten Fragments and chooses ten bladers around the planet to fight against some great evil that threatens the whole world. Those bladers are called Legendary Bladers. You're one, Gingka's one, Kyouya's one, this kid – was it Tithi? - is one, the one who told us about all this in the first place, Yuki, is one, and then there's the blader Aguma that no-one had heard of before. So that's six of you found already."

"And you're not one."

"No." Tsubasa looked a little bit cagey about that, and Ryuga made a mental note to keep an eye on anything the silver-haired man might get himself into, just in case he managed to find a way to claim a Fragment for himself.

"You said _chooses_. Are you seriously telling me a meteor has a will of its own?"

Tsubasa looked straight at him. "Doesn't L-Drago?"

That was… an excellent point, actually, not that Ryuga was going to admit that aloud. "So it's related to the other Great Star – the one that made my blade and Pegasus."

"Yes, as far as I know. But it hasn't made a new blade, it's enhanced the power of already-existing blades around the world. Yuki said we need to gather all of the power together before the evil-doers can, because they'll use the power to bring about the revival of the God of Destruction, Nemesis."

And back into the realm of complete nonsense they went. "Evil-doers? Nemesis? Gods of Destruction? Can't you hear how ridiculous you sound?"

"I've already seen some of them," Tsubasa said calmly. "Whether you want to call them evil-doers or not is up to you, but they're no friends of Gingka."

"Neither am I."

That seemed to amuse Tsubasa somewhat. "That's why they're going to want your power. They've got one already, they came to a – wait, I should start at the beginning. It starts with a legend from ancient times."

Ryuga just managed to suppress the desire to roll his eyes. "I want information, not a fairy story."

"I thought the same when Yuki first told us, but it's not as simple as that. He told us a legend his grandfather had taught him, that when a dazzling glow lights-"

"When a dazzling glow lights up the earth from the heavens, a new star fragment will arrive that will awaken a great power."

Tsubasa stared at him. "You know that legend? But it's from Koma Village."

This time Ryuga actually did roll his eyes. "It's part of L-Drago's legend. Of course I know it. Even if I hadn't studied it in order to find L-Drago in the first place, L-Drago would have told me his own story. I know that legend better than almost anyone else."

"Then you know this is real. It started with Spiral Force."

"Spiral Force?"

"Yuki and Gingka think that the power of Spiral Force sent out into space with Pegasus was the new light that lit up the earth from the heavens. You saw it. It burned like a second sun in the sky when it exploded. That was the light that summoned the new Star."

Spiral Force. That wasn't a name Ryuga had expected to hear again. After everything he'd put into making sure that thing had been buried at the bottom of the ocean along with everyone who had worked on it, was it going to come back and haunt him yet again? Was he never going to leave the spectre of Dark Nebula behind?

No. This had to be something different. There was nothing left from the work of Dark Nebula now, except him and L-Drago. That organisation would never touch blading again. "Fine. So it's another ancient legend coming to life. And what has any of this got to do with me?"

"The last bit of that legend – _light and dark are two sides of the same coin. A new light may become a new pit of darkness –_ that's the part that convinced Ryo Hagane that Yuki was telling the truth. Yuki believes – and I believe him too – that when the Star arrived, it split into pieces because it knew there were people who wanted to use its power to revive an ancient evil, and so it divided to make sure that group couldn't claim all of it at once. The ones it chose are the ones who will have to fight against that evil. That's where you come in."

Annoyingly, it made sense. Ryuga did know the legend of his own star, after all, and it did finish with those exact words. It was in reversing that phrase that he'd originally worked out how to break free of the Darkness. And Spiral Force _had_ been a brilliant light shining down over the earth unlike any that had existed in history. Ryuga had assumed the legend was talking about a supernova bright enough to be seen during the day, but the explosion from the bey-driven energy source would fit the story as well.

Looked like the little voice had been right. He was going to get dragged into Gingka's problems all over again.

 _Can't he just fix it on his own for once?_ he grumbled to L-Drago. _Haven't I repaid that debt yet?_

 _The universe has a use for you yet, my Ryuga._

That really wasn't comforting.

Tsubasa was still talking. "The other guys are already trying to get as many of the Legendary Bladers on their side as possible. If they get enough, they'll be able to revive the God of Destruction. They've got at least one blader already, and I'm guessing as soon as they figure out you're another one, which can't be long now, they'll come for you too."

Ryuga halted. "What on earth could they do to persuade me to _join them_?" he asked in disgust. "I don't team up with _anyone_."

"Power," Tsubasa shrugged, not stopping and so forcing Ryuga to start walking again to catch up. "Anything you want, really. If they bring Nemesis back, who knows what they'd be capable of. There was mention of a new order of blading – they could offer to make you the lead of that."

"Bribery."

"Whatever it takes."

"You think I can be _bribed_ to use my power for someone else's benefit?"

"… when you phrase it like that, no."

"Good."

"They'll want Tithi too."

Ryuga automatically glanced down to see where the boy had got to. He was trotting along beside them, keeping Ryuga between himself and Tsubasa, but he had taken his mask off. "So?" Ryuga asked. "How is that my problem?"

"He's travelling with you now. Doesn't that make him your responsibility?"

"He's perfectly capable of making his own decisions."

"Except about whether or not he's going to follow you?" Tsubasa asked shrewdly. Ryuga ignored him.

"You didn't finish the rest of the story. This… Aguma. Where did he come from?"

For a moment, it looked like Tsubasa was going to protest the change of subject, but Ryuga glared and he relented. "Fine, then. I'll tell you the whole thing from the beginning. I might as well, we'll be walking for ages anyway.

"Gingka left Pegasus with Madoka to fix after the damage caused by Spiral Force. It took her weeks to get it repaired, the blade was barely hanging together. She told us she'd just finished it and was about to run some final checks on it when a bright light came in through her workshop window and into the blade. Nothing seemed to have happened at first, but when Kyouya showed up and challenged Gingka, the battle caused both Pegasus and Leone to morph into new, more powerful forms. Gingka thought it was Madoka's doing at first, but as she hadn't touched Leone in months it couldn't be her.

"Then Yuki arrived. He'd been tracking the Star for months, and when it split on arrival he made the logical assumption that at least part of it had gone to Gingka as one of the best bladers in the world. He told us that the Star was a meteor, and that it had been predicted to arrive for centuries by the Mayan civilization. They believed that it would arrive in a time of great trouble, when an ancient evil called Nemesis would rise again and the Star's power would be required to fight back against it.

"Because it had split up, he needed to find all of the people who it had chosen, so Director Ryo sent everyone out to search. We knew Gingka and Kyouya had a piece at that point, and Yuki said it had split into ten pieces. He had a video his telescope had been taking whilst he tracked the arrival to prove it.

"Gingka went to an island in the Ceram Sea in Indonesia with Yuki, Kyouya, Benkei, Kenta and Madoka to look for a light they had tracked there using the trajectory calculated by the video. But there wasn't anyone there, so they assumed whoever it was had already gone, maybe taken by the ones serving Nem-"

"Did you say the Ceram Sea?" Ryuga interrupted.

"-esis. Yes. Why?"

"That was me. I was training there, about three weeks ago."

"Of course," Tsubasa groaned. "Gingka said it was an island with a sacred mountain to a dragon god. I should have worked out it was you. At least that solves that mystery. Why did you leave so quickly? It was only a few days between the Star arriving and Gingka and the others reaching the island."

"I saw the light split. I wanted to know what it was, and why it had come to me, so I followed the closest one away from the island. It should have been somewhere near here."

He saw the light of understanding dawn in Tsubasa's eyes the same moment the realisation hit him. "The boy," he said, just as Tsubasa said "Tithi," and the boy looked up at both of them.

"W-what is it?" he asked timidly.

"That light I was following. I thought it was the blade from the tournament, but it was yours." Ryuga turned back to Tsubasa. "Keep talking. You haven't finished explaining yet."

But Tsubasa was frowning at him. "The villagers wouldn't let them stay on the island because a blader had trespassed on their sacred mountain and made the dragon god angry. That was you, wasn't it?"

"What of it?" Ryuga shrugged. "There was no dragon there except me. It was an active volcano, not a dragon's curse." Okay, maybe the intensity of the training he'd gone through there had destabilised the crust and actually let the volcano begin erupting again, but that would have happened in a few decades' time anyway. Not really his fault.

Tsubasa sighed. "It was a sacred place, Ryuga. You shouldn't have done that. But I suppose there's nothing to be done about it now."

"So they got kicked off the island. Who cares. What next?"

"They backtracked to China to see if Wang Hu Zhong had seen anything, as they're world-class bladers too. All they had was a rumour of someone with a bey that gave off a flash of brilliant red light in battle, who was incredibly strong, and had appeared about the same time that the Star had descended. Figuring that powerful bladers would want to take part in big tournaments, Gingka, Yuki, Kyouya and Benkei entered a tag-team tournament nearby. Kyouya and Benkei fought Da Shion and Chi-Yun from Wang Hu Zhong, remember how strong they are?"

"Don't care."

Tsubasa rolled his eyes. "Figures," he muttered, then louder: "During the battle, Kyouya brought out a new attack, far more powerful than any we'd seen from his previous blades. The blade changed… Madoka called it changing _modes_. That got Gingka's attention, and he realised pretty quickly that if he got to the final and faced Kyouya there, he wouldn't be able to beat him with just the same old attacks he'd always used. So he started working on his own special attack, but he barely had time to finish it before he had to battle Chao Xin and Mei Mei in the semi-final. They nearly defeated Gingka and Yuki, because Gingka's attack was strong but it wasn't fully under control. But Yuki… they described it as an _awakening_. His blade morphed into another shape, just like Pegasus and Leone had, because he wanted to win so badly and help Gingka. That's when we found out he was a Legendary Blader too."

So blades changing into a different form was definitely a mark of the heaven-sent power. Useful. That would be an obvious outer sign to look for when he hunted down the rest of this strange, disparate group.

"So they found the limits of their beys' strength, and how to master the mode changes," Ryuga said aloud. "Boring. I did that weeks ago. Gingka and Kyouya ended up battling each other in the finals, and Gingka won, I suppose?"

"That's the thing," Tsubasa said. "They didn't win. Kyouya and Benkei lost in the semi-finals, and Gingka and Yuki lost in the finals, both to the man called Aguma, who was the Legendary Blader they were looking for, though it was his tag-team partner Bao who actually had the red bey."

For a moment, Ryuga was certain that his ears had stopped working. "Did you just say that Gingka _lost?_ "

"Yes, to another Legen-"

"Gingka _and_ Kyouya used the full abilities of their new beys and _lost_ to some random blader no-one had ever heard of before?"

"Trust me, we were surprised too," Tsubasa began, but Ryuga wasn't listening any more.

Gingka had lost? Gingka, the only man who had ever defeated Ryuga, had lost under tournament conditions to an unknown blader in his first tournament, whilst Gingka was wielding what should have been the full power of the strongest evolution of his blade? How _dare_ he insult Ryuga like that?

"Pathetic," Ryuga snarled. If just anyone could beat Gingka, what did that say about Ryuga? "And Gingka's still calling himself a _Legendary Blader_?"

"That's what-"

"I don't care." A small part of Ryuga was confused as to why he was so angry about it, but the rest of him was backed up by an L-Drago who could only be described as incandescent. "It's pathetic. To think they once thought they could challenge _me._ They know _nothing."_

"He was immensely strong. We didn't know he was the Legendary Blader until after Kyouya fought him. Up until then, we thought it was his partner, Bao, the one with the red bey."

That just made Ryuga angrier. "So Gingka went into the battle _knowing_ he was facing someone else with the same power and _still lost?_ "

"What's so bad about Ginger losing?" piped up a little voice from next to him. The boy was staring up at him. "Everyone loses sometimes."

" _Gingka,_ not _Ginger,_ " Tsubasa said before Ryuga could. "He's one of the best bladers in the whole world. He's also the only one who has ever defeated Ryuga."

The boy's eyes went huge. "You've only lost once?" he asked. "Whoa, that's the same as me!" Then he paused, and looked ruefully towards the distant mountains. "Ah. I guess you've beaten me twice now, though."

It was getting increasingly difficult to keep L-Drago from getting involved again – the angrier Ryuga got, the more eager the dragon was to do something about it. In this case, he was volunteering to throw Tsubasa into the mountains to join his blade, which was unnecessarily violent even for him.

 _It wasn't Tsubasa's fault,_ Ryuga told him, determined to remain in control. _He had nothing to do with it. Let's find this man who defeated Gingka Hagane and show him how little he knows of power. That is a much better use of our time._

L-Drago wasn't so easy to calm down this time. _Who could beat Gingka?_ he hissed. _Pegasus is mine to defeat, no-one else's. If Ziggurat's pet hound couldn't defeat him_ _with all the power of Hades at his command_ _, and the Emperor of Europe couldn't defeat him_ _with the left-spinning blade_ _, how dare this upstart manage it_ _with neither_ _?_

 _We helped Gingka win against Julian,_ Ryuga said. _And Gingka knows how to fight the power of Hades_ because _he fought us._ _Besides, t_ _here are others who have defeated Gingka._ _We_ _'ve fought most of them,_ _and won_ _every time_ _._

 _Name them, then._

 _You know them, L-Drago. Hyoma, once Gingka's great rival,_ _though we did leave it to another to beat him_ _._ _Kyouya,_ _who_ _defeated him in battle-royale format,_ _admittedly, but still a victory._ _Yuu, who beat him one-on-one under tournament conditions, which not even we have managed yet –_ _and Yuu was an unknown blader in his first tournament when he did it, like this Aguma._ _There are others too, you know that._

 _Those were early defeats._ _Gingka gets stronger with every battle. To defeat both Kyouya and Gingka_ _now_ _, this man must have a truly monstrous power._

 _Which is why we will get it from him, L-Drago._ _We get stronger with every battle too._ _And_ _Gingka's weakness has always been overestimating his own ability to pull strong attacks from nowhere at the last moment._ _He never truly knows his bey until we come along and force him to realise it._ _Patience._ _We will have our victory. But i_ _nformation first._

"Describe him," Ryuga said to Tsubasa, who looked surprised. "This Aguma. Describe him to me."

"Tall," Tsubasa said. "Taller than you, even. Broad too. Spiky brown hair. He wields a purple and yellow blade, Scythe Kronos. He was wearing a light brown cloak in the video I saw, but that could change. His tag-team partner Bao is smaller than him, with red hair, and a blade with a red energy ring. Hades Crown, I think it's called."

That was enough that Ryuga would recognise them. "So where are they?"

"I don't know. The ones who want to revive Nemesis offered him something he wanted, and he went with them. I only saw the video of it yesterday, though, so they're probably still in Asia somewhere."

"So if I want to defeat him, I have to hunt down these 'evil-doers'? How _convenient_."

Tsubasa actually laughed. "You'll never change, will you?"

What a weird question. "So is that all?"

That got him a shrug. "As much as I know. The tag-team tournament was only the day before yesterday so I doubt much has changed."

"And where is Gingka going now?"

"Europe, I think. The Director said they'd had a call from Julian Konzern just after they got back from the tournament to say that there was a lead on a Legendary Blader in Greece. And that's all I know."

So. There were ten in total who had the power he wanted to understand. Six of them had already been found. Gingka and Kyouya would never agree to let him take hold of their power even to examine it, and if this newcomer Yuki was with Gingka then it was unlikely that Gingka would allow him to battle Ryuga either. That left the man Aguma, already with the so-called "evil-doers", wherever he might be, Ryuga himself, and the boy. If Ryuga wanted to find out more about this strange, otherworldly power and how it interacted with itself, he was going to have to hunt down the remaining four himself before Gingka – or the other side – found them.

"So what are you going to do now?" Tsubasa asked after a long silence. "You know that the evil-doers are going to know about your power very soon, if they don't already. They'll come for you next, there's almost no-one on this planet who doesn't know how strong you are. You could make all the difference in the end." He paused and swallowed, as if he was bracing himself for something he didn't want to say. "Ryuga. Please help Gingka. Help _us._ If Yuki's right, if this really is going to end in a battle against a _god,_ we're going to need all the strength we can get."

 _What's a god to a dragon?_ Ryuga murmured to L-Drago, but strangely he got no answer. Aloud, he said "Why do you care?"

"Because I don't want this world to fall into the Darkness." Tsubasa met his eyes squarely, defiance lighting up his spirit. "You were right. I saw nothing of it compared to you. But even from the tiny shadow I saw, I don't want anyone else to go through that. So I'm going to fight it, no matter what it costs me. If you remember the Darkness the same way I do, then please listen to me. Help us."

Tsubasa had been weak, and fallen so easily to the Darkness when it had whispered to him in the night. But he had fought back, albeit with Ryuga's help, and like him he had broken free of it in the end. As the only other person in the world that Ryuga knew of who had managed to step _back_ into the light, perhaps he had earned the right to a proper answer.

"I'm not going to team up with Gingka and his little gang, if that's what you're asking me to do," Ryuga said. "I told you already, I'm tired of always coming to your rescue. But if you think these 'evil-doers' are going to find something to persuade me to join them, you're wrong. I'm going to find the rest of these Legendary Bladers on my own."

Tsubasa looked tired. "And steal their power, as you always do?"

"In the end," Ryuga shrugged. "Only one person can be the strongest, and that's me. But I won't take their power yet. Not until I understand what it is and why it came to me." He smiled, making it as slow and cruel as he could. "Except this Aguma. I'll crush him with my own hands."

"That's the closest to help I'm going to get from you, isn't it?" Tsubasa sighed. "Fine. I'll tell Gingka and the others about you and Tithi, so that they know it was you on the island. I'm not going to stop them from coming after you themselves, but I'll tell them you won't actively work against them."

"And you? Where are you going next?" If Tsubasa knew the location of another Star Fragment, it would make Ryuga's job a lot easier.

"America," Tsubasa told him, to Ryuga's slight surprise. He hadn't expected Tsubasa to fall for something so blatant. "Gingka thinks that Masamune might be a Legendary Blader, so I'm going there to test him and see if we can get him to awaken."

Ryuga frowned. "Who's Masamune?"

"My team-mate from Gan Gan Galaxy that wasn't Gingka or Yuu? Black hair, very loud, Ray Striker bey? He was in Spiral City, you should have seen him there at least."

Oh, _him._ Not that Ryuga cared. He'd only really paid attention to Gan Gan Galaxy because of the other three anyway, and he'd had other things on his mind in Spiral City. Well, if this Masamune was an associate of Gingka, he wasn't going to be any help to Ryuga's mission either.

"So that's all the information you have?" he asked.

"Yes," Tsubasa said, and gestured with one hand to the vast distance still between them and the mountains. "Looks like we'll have to talk about something else for the rest of the way."

And that was enough of that.

"Hah! As if I'd continue travelling with someone who wasn't any use to me," Ryuga sneered. "You can go and get your own blade back."

"What about Tithi's?"

Ryuga just laughed at him. "You've given me all I want, you're on your own from now on." He turned just enough to grab the back of the boy's tawny poncho, not really caring when he grabbed a handful of pink hair at the same time and ignoring the boy's yelp of pain. "I suppose I should thank you for the information, though. You've been very helpful, for once."

 _Let's go, L-Drago._

 _As you wish._

The last thing Ryuga saw as red lightning wrapped around him and the boy was Tsubasa's half-frustrated, half-resigned expression.

Well, really, what else did he expect? _Assistance?_ Tsubasa knew nothing of him. He might have peered into the Darkness, but he did not and never would understand Ryuga, the Dragon Emperor, who had walked right through it and come out the other side.

No-one ever would.

No-one ever _could._

And that was just the way it should be.


	5. Chapter 5

_Soooo I disappeared again sort of, but this is the longest chapter so far to make up for that!_

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

The first thing Ryuga heard when the lightning unwound from his vision was the howling of the wind, much louder up here on the mountains than it had been on the plains. The second was the piercing but hastily muffled shriek of the boy.

They were nearly a kilometre up from the desert, surrounded by grey rocks and greyer lichen. A few scrubby trees grew out of cracks, clinging to the rocks by sheer force of will and a few gnarled roots. Other than the wind, nothing moved. There were no birds, no animals, not even any insects. All that showed the unusual way that the two of them had arrived was a faint grey scorch mark on the rocky path.

"Wh… what was that?" The boy was looking around in what seemed to be shock and fear gradually melting into awe. "That was _magic!_ Did we just _fly_?"

Ryuga resigned himself to having to explain. "Not exactly. L-Drago can carry people inside lightning. It's more like teleporting."

The boy stared. "That's _so cool_. I didn't know you were magic. Can we do it again? And where's Mr Tsubasa?"

"No, and I don't care. We're here to find your blade, now get on with it."

The boy seemed to deflate slightly, but did as he was told, heading down the path a little to where a rockfall suggested something had disturbed the stillness of the mountain. Ryuga watching him dispassionately. It was going to be very strange having someone travelling with him for however long it took him to find the rest of these so-called Legendary Bladers. But he wasn't going to let the boy out of his sight, not if he wanted to find out all he could about this new power.

 _L-Drago, can you sense any more of those Fragments?_

 _Not here,_ the dragon replied. _We're too far away. Perhaps on the other side of the mountain._

Ryuga quickly calculated how long that was going to take. He didn't have much food left, and if the rest of the mountain was this bare, it was going to be a struggle to get to the other side, especially with an extra mouth to feed.

He really hadn't thought this whole travelling-with-someone-else thing through properly.

 _He has found it,_ L-Drago said suddenly, and Ryuga looked down the mountain just in time to see the boy tuck something yellow into a pocket. Then, to his surprise, the boy went back to digging through the rockfall.

"What are you doing?" he called, taking a couple of steps down the path. "You've got your blade, it's time to go."

"I'm looking for Mr Tsubasa's beyblade!" the boy replied, looking up with big eyes.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Because you didn't bring him here too so it's going to take him ages to get up here. He'll be very tired so I want to make it easier for him to find."

Ryuga suppressed the urge to sigh. "No. We're leaving."

"No." The boy's eyes suddenly blazed. "Not until I find it. I'm staying here."

"You're coming with me whether you like it or not."

"I said _no_. I'm not going with you until I find that blade."

Ryuga stared. He couldn't remember the last time someone had directly refused to do what he said, let alone someone so small and so much younger than him. L-Drago shuddered into life in his head, crackling with Ryuga's growing irritation and anger.

 _Shall I move him?_

Sparks of irritation flickered through Ryuga's blood. How had it come to this? Was it really worth the bother of keeping the boy around if it meant Ryuga's own journey was going to be disrupted?

 _Thirty seconds,_ he said. _Thirty seconds and then we move him._

"Found it!"

The cheery voice dragged Ryuga unwillingly out of his angry thoughts, and he looked over to see the boy waving a familiar purple and silver blade aloft. Earth Eagle didn't look too bad for a blade that had been thrown across miles of desert into a mountain at nearly fifty times the speed of sound, but then again it was mostly a Defence type. The boy looked around, then spotted a flat rock near the edge of the path, and carefully placed Earth Eagle on it, clearly visible to anyone who approached the rockfall.

"There," he said happily. "Now he doesn't have to dig it up!"

Ryuga wheeled around and set off up the path towards the summit, not bothering to look back to see if the boy was following. If the boy was headstrong enough to refuse Ryuga's orders, then he wasn't going to be the pushover he'd been so far. Was this really what battling did to the boy? Gave him the confidence to push back? Ryuga wasn't certain he liked this new side, not if it was going to get in the way of his plans.

"Hey, why _did_ you leave Mr Tsubasa behind?" Ryuga didn't reply to the sudden voice from just behind him. "Because that was really very rude, you should have brought him too. And why did you throw our blades all the way out here? I never would have been able to find it again ever if you hadn't brought me here, and we're miles and miles away from the tournament. You could have just dropped it off the tower, that wouldn't have been so bad. And you used so much power! You could have damaged Quetzalcoatl and Mr Tsubasa's blade!"

" _Be quiet,_ " Ryuga snarled, rounding on the boy. "I told you to come with me, not to let the whole mountain know we're here."

The boy froze, and his expression fell to a much more fearful one. He dropped back by several paces, pace slowing until he was rapidly falling behind.

 _I can move us on in a flash,_ L-Drago suggested quietly. _We could be on the far side of the mountains in a second, just the two of us._

But Ryuga had managed to get the flare of temper under control again. _No. As irritating as it is, I need him with me to test other Legendary Bladers and find out why we have been given this power._

 _Why can't we go and find that Aguma first?_ L-Drago suggested. _I want to show him what I think of him._

 _Tsubasa said the bad guys have him,_ Ryuga reminded his dragon. _I'm not going to walk right up to them until I know much more about them and what they're up to._

 _But he beat Pegasus,_ L-Drago protested. _No-one beats Pegasus except me._

Ryuga ignored his dragon's mutterings as he continued up the path towards the little pass that would lead to the far side of the mountain. At a turn, he glanced back to see the boy still just about following them, eyes downcast and feet dragging.

This was going to be a long journey.

.

As the day wore on, some of the boy's confidence seemed to come back, at least to the point that he caught up with Ryuga again. But Ryuga maintained an angry, stony silence, even when the boy recovered enough confidence to start trying to talk to him. He had no interest in talking to a child who had yet to do anything useful on this trip, except make Ryuga angry enough to use his ultimate move on a blader that really didn't deserve it. Gradually, the boy got the hint and fell silent, and fell behind again.

By the time night came, they were through the pass and heading down the mountain on the far side. Ryuga's foul mood still hadn't dissipated, and L-Drago was still muttering about the man who had beaten Pegasus. To top off everything else, not even the dragon had been able to find any food on the bare rocks of the mountain, and the last three hazelnuts from a few nights before didn't really count as actual food when Ryuga had been in a full-powered battle that day _and_ had used L-Drago's power to jump over several miles. Of course, he was tough enough that one day without food wasn't a problem, but why did it have to be _that_ day? Just because he could survive it didn't mean he _liked_ being hungry.

The campsite Ryuga chose was barely more than a shallow scoop in the rocks, sheltered by a spur of stone that jutted out from the mountain. There was enough room for two, but the boy hung back, choosing to stay further out on the path. Well, that meant less competition for the fire's warmth, Ryuga supposed.

Talking of fire, it was nearly impossible to get a proper one going. There were precious few plants this high up (if there had been more, there would at least have been an edible one) and the wood from branches he'd snapped off as he passed the scraggly trees that poked out of the cracks in the rocks wasn't going to last long. He had L-Drago for warmth, at least whilst both of them were awake, but that would drain more energy that he didn't have the food to replace.

The boy had curled up in a little ball under his poncho and seemed to be trying to go to sleep at once whilst he was still warm from the walking. At least he wasn't trying to start another conversation, and it was easy enough to ignore him like this. Ryuga settled down cross-legged by the fire and once again set L-Drago Destructor into a slow, steady spin before closing his eyes.

One breath in.

One breath out.

 _Focus._

L-Drago was almost _prickly_ as Ryuga reached out across their link, his mood no better than Ryuga's. He had no intention of settling down and reigniting their connection, more intent on spitting fire and sparks of lightning at the thought that someone else had managed to defeat the strongest version of Pegasus so far. Ryuga struggled for a few minutes with his unruly dragon, but despite his efforts to calm his mind L-Drago clearly didn't want to communicate. Frustrated, he gave up, stopping L-Drago Destructor's spin and clipping it back into its gauntlet. He lay down next to the fading fire, restless but tired, and hungry too. With L-Drago still swirling uneasily around his thoughts, it was almost impossible to sleep, and the distracted dragon barely remembered to keep Ryuga's internal temperature steady after the fire dipped into embers.

Wonderful. It was going to be one of _those_ nights. Ryuga flipped over onto his back and stared up at the sky, hoping to see the stars that had always watched over him. But clouds were drawing around the mountain and the night sky was obscured by mist.

Was it really worth it? So much had gone wrong since the boy had started following him – the poisonous plants he hadn't identified, the rigged tournament, the useless "star fragment", the news that there was another rival who was capable of taking down Gingka Hagane and Pegasus, and worst of all the feeling that he was just going to get dragged into Gingka's mess all over again.

He had better things to do than fix everything for them. He'd saved their World Championship dreams three times – helping Tsubasa before the Darkness took him completely, training Gingka against left-rotating beys for his match against Julian, and then finally taking part on their behalf against Starbreaker. Then he'd even rescued them at Hades City, and had done most of the work in slowing down the reactor so that the Spiral Force could be safely released. He was tired of sorting out their problems. Couldn't they leave him alone to do his own thing for just a few years?

Why was it always him and Gingka?

.

Morning came, and with it came the fog.

Ryuga woke up hungry, freezing cold even with his dragon's help, and now wet through from the clouds that had surrounded them all night. His fire was out with no fuel to restart it, his dragon was still being uncooperative, and the boy was still asleep.

 _I've said it before, we don't have to stay with him,_ L-Drago muttered sleepily. _I know his spirit now. I can track Quetzalcoatl down easily enough. Just leave him here. We can find him later, after we've found the trail of the next one._

 _No,_ Ryuga said. _I told you. I'm not letting him go just for these 'bad guys', whoever they are, to swoop in and grab his power for themselves. I don't care what Gingka's problem with them is, but they're not touching him._

 _Have it your way,_ L-Drago shrugged, apparently amused by this response, and curled up into a knot before belatedly sending out a pulse of heat that at least chased out some of the chill. _Wake me up when we're ready to move._

Ryuga told his dragon exactly what he thought of that, and L-Drago flicked his tail at the language, but otherwise didn't move. Ryuga sighed and pulled one knee up to his chest, looping his arms around it and staring into nothing as he waited for the boy to wake up.

It felt like a long time, considering that he couldn't really see the progress of the rising sun through the wet fog, but Ryuga's internal clock was more accurate than that. It was about an hour later that the boy stirred and opened his eyes. He seemed to realise that someone was watching him almost immediately and sat upright, looking around until he caught Ryuga's eyes.

"Pack up and get moving," Ryuga said shortly. "There's no food, so we're leaving now."

The boy opened his mouth as if he was going to object, but then he seemed to crumple slightly and did as he was ordered. Five minutes later, Ryuga and the boy were on the move, heading into the next stretch of their journey down the mountain.

As the morning marched on towards noon, the fog quickly burned away in the sun, leaving only tiny wisps of cloud floating on the fierce wind far above even the tops of the mountains. The sun was bright and warm, but the way that the path down the mountain twisted and turned meant that there was plenty of shade and even limited shelter from the wind. It was actually a very pleasant day for walking, and if Ryuga's residual bad mood hadn't soured pretty much everything he might have been enjoying himself. Instead, he focused on finding the way down. Looking at their surroundings, they would have to reach the foothills of the mountain before they could find any food, so Ryuga pushed on far past when he usually would have stopped for a break. To his surprise, the boy was keeping up much better today than he had the day before, despite a lingering nervousness that exhibited itself as jumpiness whenever Ryuga looked his way. Perhaps it was because they were going downhill.

Just past noon, Ryuga rounded a corner of the path and saw a few levels below him a wide, flat area as the path opened out into a shelf of rock where the mountainside became shallower. Judging by the rustling he could suddenly pick up, there were plants down there, which meant his chances of finding food had just increased significantly. He glanced around to check where the boy had got to – not far behind, making his way over a particularly treacherous patch of scree. Ryuga could just jump the next few levels of path easily, but he had no intention of waiting around if the boy couldn't or wouldn't follow him.

And then he heard the voice.

"Come on, we can do this – one more time!"

 _I know that voice,_ Ryuga thought, just as L-Drago perked up with _I know that blade! That's-_

"Libra! _FINAL INFERNO BLAST!_ "

The boy shrieked and dived behind a rock as a pillar of sound and light screamed up from the shelf below, as green as burning copper and tall enough to reach above even the high, wispy clouds. It was the loudest thing Ryuga had ever heard, even in his memories of standing in the depths of an erupting volcano, and the ground and the air trembled with the force that reverberated through them. The scraggly trees shook dusty soil from their roots as they pulled away from the cliffs. First dust, then pebbles, then actual rocks began rising all around them, levitating on the rippling air. Everything around Ryuga seemed to be too tight, too much, pressing in from every angle and tugging him towards the edge of the path. It was – and he did not use the word lightly – _overwhelming_. There wasn't a single sense that wasn't flooded with the sheer amount of power emanating from the pillar.

Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the pillar wobbled, flickered, and vanished.

In the ringing aftermath, a cloud of dust obscured everything below them. The wind caught the edges of it and pulled it away as Ryuga leaned over the edge of the path to see the open area below, and found himself looking straight into the brilliant emerald green eyes and equally brilliant smile of Yuu Tendo.

"Ryuga! It's you!"

The boy peered out from behind his rock. "What was _that_?" he asked, but Ryuga ignored him in favour of jumping the last couple of levels of the path to drop down into the impressive dish that Libra's new attack had carved out of the rock.

"Libra said you were nearby!" Yuu said by way of greeting. "What are you doing here? Are you travelling? I haven't seen you since… let me think – yeah, just before the A-block Finals! That was months ago, where have you _been_? I wanted to talk to you and no-one knew where you were."

"Which question do you want me to answer?" Ryuga asked, climbing out of the deep dip. "Pick one."

But Yuu's eyes had gone wide. "Who's _that?_ " he asked, pointing over Ryuga's shoulder. Ryuga turned to see the boy gingerly sliding down the rocks. When he realised that he was being watched, the boy squeaked and grabbed for the mask on his back, losing both his grip and his balance as he did so. With a muffled yelp, he tumbled down the rest of the rocks, ending up flat on his back on the far side of the dip, motionless.

"Hey, you okay?" Yuu called, dodging around Ryuga and running to the other side of the dish. He crouched down next to the boy. "You're not hurt, are you? Here, let me help you up." He put a hand out and pulled the boy to his feet, steadying him until he pulled away. "There you go. I'm Yuu, by the way. Who are you?"

"Tithi," the boy said so quietly that Ryuga barely heard it. "My name's Tithi."

"Hi Tithi! Nice to meet you!" Yuu glanced back at Ryuga, then at the boy again. "Hey, were you travelling with _Ryuga?_ That's so cool!"

The boy nodded, then shook his head. "We were travelling to a big tournament, but that's over now," he said, pulling away from Yuu and clutching his mask close to him. "Then Mr Ryuga made me follow him."

Yuu immediately turned on Ryuga. "You _made_ him follow you? Are you being mean again, Ryuga?"

Ryuga opened his mouth and then shut it again. He didn't really know how to answer that.

"Hang on, you said a big tournament," Yuu said, turning back again. "Does that mean you're a blader?"

The boy nodded, much more enthusiastically this time. "Uh-huh. I haven't had lots of fights in a long time, but this is my beyblade!" He held out the yellow bey. Yuu leaned in close.

"Whoa, that's so pretty!" he exclaimed. "What's its name?"

"Death Quetzalcoatl!" the boy said happily. "You really think it's pretty?"

"Sure I do! It's really nice. How come you haven't had many fights with it? With a bey this nice you must have tons of people you can fight."

That got a shake of the head. "Not really. I want to fight and get better, but no-one wants to play with me ever. Mr Ryuga did, but only once, and then when I tried to fight him again he threw my beyblade into this mountain."

Yuu's eyes lit up. "Whoa, you've fought _Ryuga?_ You must be really strong. Hey, hey, how about you fight me and my Libra? I've been in training on my own for a really long time, I want to fight someone too!"

"Really?" The boy's eyes went very wide. "Really really? You'll battle me?"

"Of course! Look, I even made the dish already." And Yuu pointed to the massive hole that Libra's attack had made.

Ryuga was beginning to feel a bit unnecessary to the conversation. Deciding that if they wanted him they could always get his attention, he headed towards what had once been a small stand of scrubby trees and was now a ring of fallen trunks thanks to Libra's enormous power. As he had hoped, a few of them had some early fruits on them, which he quickly gathered as the two young boys behind him readied themselves across the dish from each other.

He had forgotten quite how fond he was of Yuu. Of all the bladers he'd fought under the control of the Darkness, Yuu had been the only one to take his defeat with a smile, and come right back to ask for more, more excited about fighting than the result.

It had been a good battle, that first one out in the desert. Possibly the best he'd ever fought. Everyone since then had always seemed… dull. They wanted to fight him because he was _Ryuga_ , because he was the Dragon Emperor, to have the honour of saying they'd battled him (and lost).

But Yuu?

Yuu had always fought him exactly the same way he fought everyone else, with a laugh and a smile and a call of _hey_ _, Ryuga, I want to fight you again!_ and even in the depths of darkness and despair had reached out to him for help – not that Ryuga had given it.

Yuu had just wanted to battle him as a blader, not as a title, or even as a rival. It didn't matter whether he won against him or not. The battle was what counted.

So this was going to be interesting.

"Ready, Tithi?" Yuu called. "Three!"

"Two!"

"One – _LET IT RIP!"_

Ryuga, arms full of fruit and a small pile of mushrooms L-Drago had said were edible that he'd found at the exposed roots of one tree, turned back just in time to see the boy's blade fly across the dish to meet Libra head on. He looked around and spotted a rock nearby that would give him a good view of the battle. Hopping up onto it, he found it was was warm from the sun and sheltered from the wind, and leaned against the side of the mountain at such an angle that it formed something like a chair. He settled back, munching on one of the fruits and watching the unfolding battle with interest.

Libra and Quetzalcoatl clashed in the centre of the dish, both fighting for control. Yuu's Stamina-focused bey would be safest there, and the boy liked to play defensively, if Ryuga remembered their battle correctly. So the middle was the key to the whole battle.

"Hey, Tithi – watch this!" Yuu called, grinning. "Libra! _Sonic Wave!_ "

Green light whipped out from Libra's performance tip, one of them connecting with a loud bang and shooting the other bey high into the sky. The others carved lines into the dish as the boy scrambled his bey away from the oncoming attack, staring open-mouthed.

"How d'you do that?" he asked. "You weren't anywhere near me and you still hit me!"

"That's Libra's speciality! I can use supersonic vibrations to attack or defend."

The boy actually _bounced._ "That's amazing, Yuu! This is such a fun battle!"

Oh yes. The boy pretty much changed personalities when he fought. Ryuga had forgotten that.

"Yeah! Come on, Tithi, show me your best!"

L-Drago rippled in Ryuga's mind, attention caught by how much damage Libra's Sonic Wave had caused. Deep ruts were lining every side of the dish, some of them nearly three inches deep.

 _He's stronger,_ L-Drago murmured. _Much stronger._

Yuu's blade looked the same as the one Ryuga remembered, but of course now that it was spinning at full speed it was difficult to tell. And that move he'd been practicing had been far more powerful than anything Ryuga had seen from the younger blader before. Clearly he'd been training, but could it be something more?

"My turn, my turn!" the boy exclaimed, and Death Quetzalcoatl whipped around as fast as a striking snake and smashed into Libra, sending it flying into the air.

"Well done, Tithi!" Yuu called as he stabilised his blade in mid-air and dropped it safely back into the centre of the dish. "Now, let's see what you can really do!" And he sent Libra looping up to the top edge of the dish before smashing down on Death Quetzalcoatl.

To Ryuga's amazement, nothing seemed to happen.

"Don't take Quetzalcoatl's fusion wheel lightly!" the boy cheered. "It's like a castle, nothing can get through!"

Yuu's expression was a mix of delight, confusion and awe. "Oh wow," he said. "I thought you were a Defence type, but you're not – that's a Balance type! They're super-difficult to master, you're way better than I thought! Libra, let's give him a full barrage!"

The green curves of light multiplied almost immediately, several of them surrounding Death Quetzalcoatl and throwing it across the dish, barely hanging on to the edge before sweeping back down, dodging a stray light-curve. Impressive. Libra's supersonic vibrations weren't easy to dodge, and taking a hit from them could be deadly if you weren't fully prepared or exceptionally powerful.

"What?" Yuu gasped. "That didn't finish you? But I hit you with so many of them! How are you doing that?" He squinted at the dish. "Oh, wait, I know! I recognise that movement – you've got a Rubber Defence Flat performance tip! That uses friction to increase your defence and your stamina, _and_ it can increase attack power too! That's why you're so well balanced. It's not just your fusion wheel that's balanced across all the types, it's the whole bey!" He smiled. "What an amazing bey you've got, Tithi. But I'm still going to win! If it's friction you're using, then I'm just going to have to turn this up a notch – Libra, _Sonic Buster!"_

A piercing whine built up as Libra's vibrations punched through the rock of the dish and turned the whole thing to sand, spreading out in a ring from the performance tip. _That_ move Ryuga remembered all too well. Thinking your way out of a sand-trap when you were expecting a battle of strength was a nasty surprise, even for him. He'd had L-Drago's monstrous power, of course, so he'd been able to get out, but what would the boy do?

"Ah!" the boy squeaked, jumping up and down with excitement. "That's _magic!_ You're magic like Mr Ryuga!"

"Huh?"

"He can use lightning to move places and you can use light to hit people and turn rock into dust, you're both so amazing! I'm so lucky I met you, that's for sure!"

"Yeah, but how are you going to get out of it?" Yuu put his hands on his hips, laughing. "You're trapped in my sand trap, and there's no way out! Your Rubber Flat performance tip means you're stuck in this sand stadium, but I've got a Sharp performance tip – I can go wherever I want!"

And Libra skimmed lightly over the crumbling dish, slamming into the gradually-sinking Quetzalcoatl with one massive attack after another.

Ryuga took a breath in and let it out slowly, letting his whole body relax into the movement as he brushed up against his dragon's will once again. He wanted to pick up every single thing he could about this battle. He got the strange feeling he wasn't going to see another one like it in a while.

One breath in. One breath out.

Yuu really had become much stronger. Between his unique bey and abilities, and his genius in battle, he was a force to be reckoned with even back when they had first met. Now Yuu had taken the next step, and had brought out his bey's abilities to their fullest. Ryuga felt a crackle of sparks run down his spine as L-Drago fizzled through his thoughts.

 _I want to fight him._

Then again, Yuu had always been something special. He was the only person Ryuga knew of who had beaten Gingka in a one-on-one battle under competition conditions. That gave him something even Ryuga didn't have. Ryuga wouldn't have ordered Doji to keep the younger blader in the Dark Nebula, alive and unharmed even after his loss to Gingka, if he had not been so fascinated by him.

Doji had looked over his glasses at him and told him to get on with taking Yuu's power along with Dan, Reiki, Tetsuya and Tobio's – it was his right, after Yuu's loss. But Ryuga had clung to that last memory of a smile so recently aimed at Gingka and once aimed at him, and shook his head.

" _Not yet,_ " he had said, voice rough with L-Drago's snarl. _"Keep him safe for me. I have others to get first._ _Let him be the last._ _"_

He had been gentle when gentleness hurt, had been kind when kindness made L-Drago shriek in his head until the pain blinded him, had been forgiving when forgiveness was beyond him. Perhaps to everyone else, it would have looked aggressive, pitiless, vengeful; but he knew what it had cost him to restrain his own strength and his dragon's endless need for power and bey-spirits, and keep both of them from harming the young boy who had never given up on him. It had been worth it to keep Yuu and his pure bey-spirit away from the Darkness. He hadn't managed to protect anyone else from it, after all.

And now, in the present, he wanted a proper battle with him. L-Drago _sang_ with the desire to fight Libra and its tall towers of light.

 _Not yet,_ he murmured to his restless dragon. _Not yet. But soon._

There wasn't much that heactually _wanted_ nowadays. It was a surprisingly pleasant sensation.

One breath in. One breath out. Feel everything. Observe everything. Know everything.

Back in the dish, the boy was practically vibrating with delight. "Ooooohhhh, this is so much fun! I want to keep fighting forever and ever and ever! I don't want this battle to be over, not ever!"

And he -

\- _he buried his bey in the sand._

Ryuga stared. That was the last thing he'd ever expected. If the boy had been facing _him,_ he would have assumed that it was a coward's move, leaving only the phenomenal defensive wings of the fusion wheel open to attack. But the way that the boy was bouncing up and down suggested something else, as if he was so determined to keep his bey spinning so that the battle would continue for longer that he would do absolutely anything to prevent an attack from connecting. Ryuga still didn't like it, but he was prepared to give the benefit of the doubt.

"What?" Yuu yelped as Libra's attacks made absolutely no impact on the other bey. "That's not fair, how are you still spinning when you're buried that deep? That should have stopped you! Fine! If that's the way it is, I'll just have to pull you out of there!"

Ryuga braced himself, knowing exactly what was about to happen. The boy didn't, not familiar with Yuu's fighting style – and specifically, with Yuu's most powerful move.

"Do it, Libra! _FINAL INFERNO BLAST!"_

Ryuga jammed his hands over his ears just in time as the air pulsed and then imploded into a tower of brilliant green. Death Quetzalcoatl shuddered, then began to move, inexorably drawn towards the pillar. The whole world was screaming. He could taste blood in his mouth, hear even through his hands the cracks as the rock he was sat on began to crumble under the incredible force, feel the press on every inch of him. All around them, stones and small plants began to levitate, vibrating so hard that they outmatched even the force of gravity. The pressure was immense. He found himself taking his hands away from his ears and pulling his gauntleted arm close to his chest, shielding his own bey from the roaring air. What awesome power this was.

" _More magic!"_

Ryuga wasn't sure how he could still hear the boy over the howl of the Inferno Blast, but there he was, _glowing_ with unearthly flames that seemed to burst from every part of him, an answering light to Libra's.

"You're amazing, Yuu, so amazing! This is the sort of battle I've been wanting for ever! Finally, someone I can use my full strength against!"

" _What?"_ Yuu shrieked. "You weren't using your full power yet?"

"Quetzalcoatl – _Ishtar Impact!"_

There was no way Ryuga could brace for such a move. Instinctively, he reached out to his dragon, uncertain whether he was offering protection or asking for it.

And L-Drago reached _back_ , their spirits and wills meeting as the boy's attack hit Yuu's best move head on. One breath in -

- _Librasong sky light greenbright from earth to sky dust like thirst in my/your/our mouth Quetzalspark sunshatter pressdown-pushback I/you/we stand strong blaze in the night over all I/you/we reign over King/Dragon/Emperor we are one the world is ours -_

\- one breath out.

L-Drago retreated from his mind, their reconnected spirits trembling as the wake of the renewed bond between them. Ryuga let the dragon's senses bleed away from his own as yellow-green Libra flew high into the air, tumbling end over end until it vanished in a twinkle.

The air stilled.

The rocks fell.

So did Libra – outside the dish.

Ryuga somehow managed to hide the majority of the shock. Or at least he hoped he had. Yuu's special move had been broken so easily when he was so much stronger than he'd been when Ryuga had fought him? What kind of power was the boy hiding?

"Yay! I won! I won!" the boy cheered, dancing on the spot. "You're so awesome, Yuu, I want to battle you again right now!"

Yuu picked his bey up and cradled it in his hands. "That was amazing, Tithi," he said quietly. "You're really, really good. I don't think I've ever fought someone like you before."

"So... you don't want to fight me again?" The boy's face fell. "I understand. No-one wants to play with me after I beat them."

"No, that's not it at all!" Yuu looked up, shocked. "Of _course_ I'll fight you again! I had so much fun in that battle, I can't wait to have another go. But first I want to finish my new special move. I haven't managed to complete the Final Inferno Blast yet, and I want to fight you when I'm at my best, because that's when you have the best battles, isn't that right, Ryuga?"

Ryuga started, slightly surprised to be suddenly included in the conversation again. Yuu's Final Inferno Blast wasn't a completed move? But it was so powerful. The only weakness Ryuga had seen was that Yuu couldn't keep it going for more than a few seconds, but if a few seconds were all you needed to drag someone into your wake and then throw them out of the stadium, why bother with a long, drawn-out attack?

"If you think you're at your best, you stagnate," he said. "You should never settle just because you think you've reached your best. You should always push for the next level. So you'll never fight each other at your best. There's no such thing."

Yuu tilted his head to one side. "You've changed, Ryuga," he said. "You always wanted to be the best. Now you're being all philosophical."

Ryuga tried to hide the smile, and mostly succeeded. "I never said you can't be _the_ best," he said. "You just can't be _your_ best, because that means you've got nothing more to improve on. My not-quite-best just happens to be better than everyone else's not-quite-best."

"Okay, I take it back, you haven't changed at all. But still. I want to finish Final Inferno Blast before I fight you again, Tithi, if that's okay?"

The boy bit his lip. "But what if I never see you again?"

Yuu stared. "Of course you'll see me again. There's loads of tournaments all around the world, I'm sure if we always aim for the top we'll see each other in one of those. Or – hey, hey, I know! Ryuga, can I travel with you and Tithi? Gingka said you're always on a training journey and Tsubasa skipped out on ours so I've been on my own for ages. I can come with you!"

"That's a brilliant idea, Yuu!" the boy cheered. "He can come, can't he, Mr Ryuga?"

Ryuga was caught by surprise at the temptation to say _yes_ immediately. Travelling with the boy was a pain – he was slow and unfamiliar with as many of the survival skills as Ryuga was – but Yuu was something different. He was probably the only human on the planet that both Ryuga and L-Drago actually liked. It might be… interesting, travelling with someone like that.

But he hesitated. He had a task to complete. He was going to find the other four Legendary Bladers before either Gingka or the 'bad guys' did, and find out just what the power was and why he had been chosen to wield it. He couldn't afford to be slowed down even more, and if he remembered anything about Yuu apart from his power and his skill, it was that he was _noisy._

 _But Yuu was so strong,_ L-Drago whispered. _What if he's one of the Legendary Bladers, but he just doesn't know it yet?_

That was an unexpectedly good point. Ryuga thought back to everything that Tsubasa had told him about the signs of a Legendary Blader.

"You're still using Flame Libra, aren't you?" he asked, and Yuu blinked at the apparent non-sequitur.

"Er, yeah," he said. "Why?"

"It hasn't changed form in the last month or so, has it?"

"No…?"

"And has a star fallen on you or Libra?"

Yuu looked confused. "What is this about, Ryuga?"

Ryuga sighed. "It's not you, then." He was unnerved at how disappointed this made him feel. L-Drago just laughed in his left ear and nestled down to watch what happened next.

Yuu frowned. "Ryuga, you're not making any sense. What are you talking about? Falling stars? Changing forms?"

"So you haven't heard anything from Tsubasa or Gingka?"

Yuu's eyes went wide. "You've seen them? I haven't seen Tsubasa since the day before we were meant to come on this training journey together. He promised he'd come with me, but then the WBBA called him away on some kind of special business and I haven't seen him since! And the last time I saw Gingki was about three days before that when he was at Madoka's shop getting Pegasus repaired."

"We met Mr Tsubasa," the boy piped up. "He was fighting Mr Ryuga and I tried to join in but Mr Ryuga got mad and threw our beyblades all the way out here. He'll probably be around here somewhere today or tomorrow."

"Wait, Tsubasa's here? Okay, okay, start this from the beginning."

"Can we have lunch first?" the boy asked, suddenly looking concerned. "I haven't eaten anything since yesterday morning and I'm starving."

"Oh! Yeah, I've got some food in my bag, I'll get it." Yuu trotted over to a small canvas bag tucked between a couple of rocks, far enough from the dish that it had escaped most of the damage- but not all. "Aw man, the bananas got squished."

"Oh, you found food, Mr Ryuga!" the boy said. Ryuga blinked and looked around at what had been his stash of fruit, now scattered across the ground after his rock-seat had collapsed. "Is there more? I can get it." He looked around, only to realise that the final attack of his battle had blown all the trees away from the rock shelf. "Oh. Maybe not."

Ryuga shook his head, strangely amused. "There's some mushrooms over there in the shelter of that rock. Gather _only_ the ones with completely white tops. They're safe." The boy gave him a smile almost as dazzling as Yuu's, and scampered over to the rocks to look.

The pile of fruit and mushrooms added to the bread and cheese that Yuu had salvaged from his bag made for a decent enough lunch for all three of them. It felt good to not be hungry any more. The sun was warm and bright, bleeding heat through Ryuga's body and chasing out all of the chill from the morning. L-Drago stretched happily in the warmth and the presence of two other strong bladers, and hummed his delight in the back of Ryuga's mind.

It was… nice.

"So," said Yuu after a few minutes of contented munching, "Tell me everything."

Ryuga's answer was to unclip L-Drago Destructor from its gauntlet and hand it over. "Take a look at that."

Yuu's jaw dropped. "That's… that's _incredible_ ," he gasped, turning L-Drago Destructor over in his hands. "This is so cool! Is this even L-Drago any more? It was Meteo L-Drago last time I saw it but that looked way different, I watched the video of you fighting Jack and this blade is so much cooler than that one. Oh, hey, is that a hidden Sharp performance tip? Has this got _different modes?_ Are you copying my beyblade? Where'd it come from? Did you make it like you did with Meteo L-Drago?"

"Not quite," Ryuga said, taking his blade back and hoping that would stop the endless questions. "I was training at night when I saw a bright light coming from the sky. It landed on me and L-Drago. The next time I launched, Meteo L-Drago morphed into this new one. This is L-Drago Destructor."

"Cool name!"

"And no, it's not a Sharp performance tip. It's a Survive. This L-Drago Destructor runs at full power for as long as it can, but once it reaches its limit, it switches to Survive mode and lets the other blade hit it -"

"-so you can absorb all their power! Wicked. You're so cool, Ryuga. But what has this got to do with a star?"

"According to Tsubasa, ten people around the world had stars fall on them and their beyblades. Those blades morphed into more powerful versions of themselves, and now apparently there's some kind of threat coming that all of the so-called Legendary Bladers have to face. Not that I'm particularly interested in _that._ I just want to know why this power came to _me._ "

"And you think I'm one?"

Ryuga shook his head. "You didn't see a light, and Libra hasn't transformed. Without that, you're not a Legendary Blader."

"Oh." Yuu deflated rapidly. "I guess. Wait, what if I was asleep when it happened?"

"It hurts," Ryuga said. "You definitely would have noticed if you keep Libra with you at all times. That amount of power being added to your bey all at once is a huge strain on your body, you couldn't possibly stay asleep through it."

"Oh. Okay." Yuu looked away. "And you're one?"

"Yes. So's the kid." Ryuga jerked a thumb at the boy. "Gingka Hagane and Kyouya Tategami too. Then there's two I've never heard of, some astronomer called Yuki and a man called Aguma that I am going to destroy."

"Huh? Why?"

"He defeated Gingka. That's _my_ job."

Yuu's eyes were so wide that Ryuga was amazed they hadn't fallen out. "He _beat Gingka?"_

"In a tag-team battle, but yes. I'm going to defeat him and his partner to show him what I think of that."

"Good," said Yuu, looking satisfied. At Ryuga's surprised expression, he explained "I thought you were going to tell me he was part of the Dark Nebula that I never knew about. Then I'd come and help you beat him straight away, but if he's a new rival for you then I'll let you get him first. You like having strong rivals, because no-one's really as strong as you and if there's no-one who can even try challenging you then you're unhappy."

 _He knows you,_ L-Drago sang softly. _He knows you so well, my Ryuga._ Ryuga pushed his dragon's laughter away with a wordless grumble.

"You've known Ryuga for a really long time, hey Yuu?" the boy asked.

Yuu smiled around a mouthful of mushrooms. "Yep. Has he told you about Dark Nebula?"

" _Yuu,_ " Ryuga said, voice as dangerous as he could make it, and Yuu flinched.

"Ah, sorry. Maybe not that. Um… yeah, so when I met Ryuga we were in this organisation that wanted to control the world and they made Ryuga their main weapon so he was kind of… awful? But he's much better now because that organisation got destroyed and Ryuga went off and trained until he was even stronger than he'd been then. He's _so_ cool! He was the first person _ever_ to defeat me, and he saved my friend and then he took my place on the World Championship team so that they could win the finals and then he saved my friends _again_ on a floating city and stopped the world from exploding and now he's this new Legendary Blader thing. You're so lucky that you get to travel with him, Tithi. If there's something big happening in the world, there's nowhere safer or more exciting than by his side."

"He was the first person to beat me too," the boy said, looking happier about this than he had before. "I tried my hardest but he's way stronger than me, that's for sure."

"Yeah, that's pretty common," Yuu said wisely. "There's lots of really strong people who've had their first defeats at Ryuga's hands. He's super strong. I think he's probably the strongest in the whole world. Except _maybe_ Gingki. Gingki beat him once. Oh yeah! You should definitely meet my other friends like Gingki and Tsubasa and Yo-yo."

 _Oh no,_ Ryuga thought. _I am not letting Hagane get his hands on the boy-_

\- no. The boy's name was Tithi. If he'd beaten Yuu, perhaps he deserved enough of Ryuga's attention to acknowledge that.

He still wasn't letting Gingka get his hands on him. Ryuga had found him; the boy was _his._

"We met Mr Tsubasa! He told us lots of things."

"Oh yeah, you said he was going to be around here today or tomorrow, didn't you?" Yuu looked thoughtful. "I guess I should go find him. He's got some explaining to do, running off like that after he _promised_ to come with me. Oh, but I wanna come with you guys! This is so unfair, why can't I be in two places at once?"

"You still want to finish the Final Inferno Blast, don't you?" Ryuga said. "You won't do that if you're coming with me. I'm not interested in stopping in one place to train for ages. I've got people to find. You'd be better off with Tsubasa than with me."

It was almost concerning how disappointed he was at that.

 _You have a friend…_ L-Drago sang. Ryuga rolled his eyes.

 _No I don't. I want to fight him again, that's all._

 _Then why were you upset that he wasn't a Legendary Blader so he could come with you like the boy is?_

 _Be quiet, L-Drago._

"Launch Libra for me," he said aloud. "Just on the flat here."

"Sure, but why?" Yuu pulled out his launcher and blade. "Let it rip!"

Ryuga watched the way that Flame Libra steadied as it went to its usual steady spin. "When you're using the Final Inferno Blast, what are you trying to do with it? Is it an attack or is it a defensive move?"

"Attack," Yuu said. "The old Inferno Blast could be a defensive move if it had to be, but this one's more aggressive so it's quicker and more powerful."

Ryuga nodded. "That's true. But what sort of blade have you got?"

Yuu gave him a strange look. "Are you feeling okay, Ryuga? You know I've got a Stamina blade. OH! You mean..."

Ryuga inclined his head. "Final Inferno Blast's weakness is its lack of stamina. And what have you got more of than almost anyone else?"

"Stamina! Yeah, now I get it! That's how to make it stronger without losing the power or the control! Wait, did you just help me?"

"I'm not going to make a habit of it," Ryuga warned, turning to the boy - no, Tithi. "Come on. It's time to go."

"Already?" Yuu said, calling Libra back to him. "But… you've barely been here for a few hours. Can't you stay until Tsubasa turns up?"

"We're going the other way," Ryuga told him. "Tsubasa will be on the other side of the mountain if he's anywhere. We're going this way."

Yuu looked sad. "Oh, okay. Guess this is goodbye for now, then."

Tithi's face fell as well. "Goodbye, Yuu. It was really great to meet you. You're my first real beyblading friend."

"Aw, c'mon Tithi! Don't be so sad. We'll definitely see each other again. As soon as I find Tsubasa and finish my training, I'll head back into the tournament circuit. You can find me there easily, can't you, Ryuga? Then I'll battle you again, okay?" Yuu offered both of them a smile. "I'll see you later Tithi, Ryuga!"

Tithi raised a hand and waved as Ryuga led the way down to the next level of the path. For a while, the two of them walked in silence, Ryuga finally enjoying the day now that every scrap of his bad mood had been blown away.

"I wish Yuu could have come with us," Tithi said finally. "He's really nice. I hope we see him again soon."

For a moment, Ryuga was going to ignore his companion and walk on in silence. But then L-Drago brushed against his mind with half a laugh and the memory of how disappointed Ryuga had been that Yuu wasn't going to be travelling with him on this journey, and he changed his mind.

"Me too," he said, hiding his own smile by looking the other way. "But next time we meet him, I'm fighting him first."

"Yeah!" Tithi said. "I wanna watch you battle him! That'll be so cool. Hey, where are we going next, Mr Ryuga?"

"L-Drago was talking to Libra whilst we were eating. He said Libra saw a light falling far away to the west of here a few weeks ago. It's a long journey, but that's where we're going. We're finding more of these Legendary Bladers and seeing if what Tsubasa told us about them was true."

"Alright!" Tithi grinned. "Let's go, Mr Ryuga!"

Ryuga sighed. "Just Ryuga, kid."

"Okay, Ryuga! Hey, can you tell me about poisonous mushrooms? How did you know the ones with the white tops were okay and the others weren't?"

"L-Drago tells me a lot, but I memorise all the shapes and colours of things that he tells me are safe. You should never collect anything that you're not one hundred percent certain is safe..."

Ignoring L-Drago's rippling laughter, Ryuga headed down the mountain with Tithi trailing half a step behind him, walking together at last.

* * *

 _So apparently even after the 25,000 word epic that was Just One Moment I still hadn't had enough of the Ryuga-Yuu relationship so here we are again. This one is happier, though._

 _Also see if you can guess what my favourite line is in this chapter. I laughed every time I read it back during edits._


	6. Chapter 6

_Just a brief and possibly unnecessary warning – do not eat wild mushrooms without proper training to distinguish the deadly ones from the safe ones. Just. Don't. My brief foray into researching how to ID them has only discouraged me even further from ever attempting to ID them myself. Ryuga has an immortal dragon on his side who can perfectly identify poisonous foods and fix him if he gets it wrong. You do not._

* * *

 **Chapter 6**

"What about this one?"

"Not poisonous, but it tastes awful."

"And this one?"

"You'd be dead a day after you ate it. After being violently ill and most of your organs shutting down."

"Whoa." Tithi stared at the two mushrooms in his hands. "But they look so similar! I was sure I'd got it right this time."

Ryuga inclined his head. "That's why you have to be _absolutely_ certain you've got the right one. The way to tell these two apart is if you snap the cap in half, like this – see the whitish liquid there, on the gills? That's the poisonous one."

Tithi turned the mushrooms over in his hands, staring so hard at them that Ryuga was certain they would be burned onto the back of his eyes for hours. "So… are there any that are easy to tell whether they're safe or not?"

If he had been anyone else, Ryuga might have smiled. "Not really. I still check all of them with L-Drago first. You're safest with fruit and nuts. And fish. There's not many poisonous fish in rivers." He straightened up and stretched. "So now that I've stopped you from poisoning us for the third time this week _,_ go and find some more firewood whilst we're here, it'll rain later and the wood needs to be dry."

 _Ryuga,_ L-Drago purred in his ear as the boy scampered away, dropping both mushrooms as he went. _You give away all our secrets so freely now._

 _He was going to put them in the stew, L-Drago. And they're not really secrets._

It had been nearly three weeks since he and Tithi had run into Yuu, and they still didn't seem to be any closer to finding the next piece of the Star. With hints and nudges from L-Drago, they had made their way across the many miles of deserted plains and were now travelling through deep forest. They had mostly been staying off the well-travelled routes, so Ryuga had no idea which country they were in, particularly as L-Drago had no real concept of human borders. Continents he could manage, but the conceptual lines between two countries meant nothing to him.

To Ryuga's surprise, after a few false starts and a few more days of stony silence, Tithi had turned out to be a relatively pleasant companion to travel with. Most of the time he was content to just follow along behind Ryuga, and he was getting better at reading when Ryuga would allow him to ask questions – or at least, when Ryuga was in a mood to answer them. That was how today's mushroom identification lesson had started. Tithi had spotted a pile of fungi growing at the base of a tree and brought a selection to Ryuga to find out which ones were edible. Tithi was generally very good at finding food, at least when he focused on that and didn't get distracted by pretty insects or a strangely-shaped tree. He had been the one to spot that the mangoes in a couple of the trees were just ripe enough to be edible, and now they had a small collection of the sweet fruit bundled up in his bag for later. He was still learning how to catch fish silently, and Ryuga definitely didn't trust him with mushrooms, but otherwise things were going well.

It was just past midday, and they had been walking through the dense woodlands since just after dawn. Ryuga was sat on a long-fallen tree in the middle of a small clearing, most of his attention on the slowly-gathering clouds above them. The air was humid under the trees, but he could still hear animals and birds going about their business so rain was still a few hours away.

Suddenly Ryuga's vision flickered, heat overlaying colours as his dragon surged forwards in his mind. _Ryuga._ _Someone_ _is following us._

Ryuga kept his eyes open, but mentally sank into his dragon's awareness. _How close?_

 _A mile or so away now. I thought they were simply on the same path, but they turned_ _deeper_ _into the forest where we did and are searching for tracks._ L-Drago paused, then said _They are not very good at tracking. They have missed several signs already and keep doubling back. But they have not stopped. I think they will be here within an hour._

Ryuga frowned. Someone attempting to track him after all this time couldn't be good. A voice that sounded suspiciously like Tsubasa's rang in Ryuga's head – _the evil-doers will try to recruit you any way they can._ If they really were sending someone after him, he was going to have to be a lot more careful.

 _Stay on guard,_ he ordered L-Drago. _Tell me when whoever it is gets to the split tree half a mile back. We'll eat here and wait for them, force a confrontation where we choose._

L-Drago's agreement was a ringing hum in his head, but Ryuga shook himself out of the dragon's thoughts easily enough, focusing as Tithi came back with a pile of dried wood in his arms.

Cold leftover stew from the night before, stored in a lidded pot from Tithi's bag, was plenty for both of them, as well as a couple of the mangoes. As Tithi was responsible for collecting firewood that day, it was Ryuga's job to sort out the food, so he had been gathering nuts and roots most of the morning and should have been calculating how much more he needed to find before dark considering how much they had left, but more than half of his attention was on his dragon and the knowledge that at any moment he might finally come face to face with the _evil-doers,_ whoever they might be. Probably pathetic, if any of Ryuga's past experiences with the people arrayed against Gingka Hagane were any indication.

"Ryuga?" Tithi asked as Ryuga finally began dishing the stew up. "Can I ask you a question?" Ryuga just looked at him – it was as good as permission, and Tithi was just about good enough at reading him now to understand it.

"It's about your arm… thing. I wanted to ask all the way back when I met you," Tithi leaned over and held out a hand so his fingers were just above the surface of the golden metal. "What's it for? I know you've got your beyblade in it, but why is it so different?"

Ryuga pulled the gauntlet away, unwilling to have anyone else touch it. "It's what L-Drago has always been in," he said. "As long as I've had the blade, I've had this. It keeps the blade safe and it keeps it close to me."

"Did someone give it to you? Or did you find it? Or – wait, did you _make_ it?"

"You said _a_ question," Ryuga said flatly, already bored of answering. "But I found it, a very long time ago. Now stop talking." Tithi subsided and took his bowl of stew in silence, just as L-Drago's voice whispered through his head.

 _Ryuga. Ten minutes._

Outwardly, of course, Ryuga didn't even react. But every instinct he had was preparing for a fight. If these evil-doers thought they could sneak up on _him,_ they were going to have a very nasty surprise.

In the way that it often did when he was waiting for something, time seemed to slow interminably. Tithi seemed to pick up on the undercurrent of tension and was obviously looking around for the cause of the disturbance, but Ryuga concentrated on listening.

 _Over there._

The snap of a twig from his left and the rustle of leaves was enough to tell Ryuga exactly where the new arrival was. He turned his head and called on L-Drago's spirit to push through into him, surrounding him with the impression of fire and rage. Let them see who they were really dealing with.

Their follower stepped into the clearing and immediately took a step back as his eyes met Ryuga's.

Well, this was a truly pathetic attempt by the evil-doers, Ryuga thought. The boy couldn't be that much older than Tithi. He was covered in mud and dust and scratches, and his clothes weren't much better than rags underneath his equally damaged brown cape. For a moment, Ryuga, Tithi and the stranger all stared at each other. Then the boy straightened up, his eyes becoming flinty with determination.

"Ryuga! I finally found you!"

Tithi slowly got to his feet, but didn't immediately hide behind Ryuga or his mask. Instead he just stared uneasily at the intruder, hands balled into fists at his side as if he was trying to decide whether to fight or run. Ryuga just maintained his glare as he looked the _child_ up and down.

"And you are?"

The boy's jaw dropped. "Wh- you know who I am, Ryuga! Kenta, Kenta, my name's Kenta! We've met tons of times before!"

Ryuga frowned, and then something about the voice and maybe the green hair sparked something way, way back in his memory. "Oh. You're one of Gingka's fishy little friends, aren't you?" Not an evil-doer. That was… almost disappointing.

"FISHY?" the boy squawked. "What's that got to do with anything?"

Ryuga shrugged. "You know. Like the little fish that follow a whale around, picking up the scraps it drops." He was quite proud of that analogy. He'd come up with it one day whilst trying to work out why Gingka always ended up with such a large group around him, and hadn't had a chance to use it before. "Aren't you?"

For a moment it looked like the boy wasn't certain whether to be outraged or relieved that Ryuga had at least recognised where he had come from. Then he took a deep breath and said "Battle me, Ryuga!"

What.

Ryuga gave him the coldest look he was capable of. "No."

"Oh come on! Battle me! I'll show you my real strength!"

"No."

The green-haired boy looked away for a second, then looked back almost slyly. "What if I said I was a Legendary Blader? What then?"

It was probably a lie. L-Drago wasn't picking up anything about the boy to suggest that he might have hidden wells of power, and if he was a Legendary Blader, why wasn't he with Gingka, if they were friends? Gingka tended to keep his gang close to him, after all.

But that was the thing. Gingka's friends could be tricky. You never knew when one of them might be hiding an unexpected amount of power. Yuu had been far stronger than Ryuga remembered (L-Drago _burned_ at the memory of the Final Inferno Blast and the desire to tackle it properly – would it be enough to use Supreme Flight or would the Ultimate Move have to be summoned to compete with it? He wanted to fight him _so much_ ). Tsubasa had been pretty good as well, and neither of them had this Legendary power.

"So you know about those," was all Ryuga said aloud. "What do you know?"

"I know a lot!" the boy said obstinately. "But I'm not going to tell you unless you fight me!"

Was every single one of Gingka's useless friends determined to pay for their own defeat in _information?_ It wasn't the sort of thing Ryuga usually went in for. He could always find out the facts he needed in his own way.

"If you win, I'll do whatever you ask me. In exchange, if I win, you have to listen to what I have to say!"

Like that was ever going to happen. Feeling as if he was being altogether far too nice about this, Ryuga stood up slowly, towering over the boy. For a second, he saw a flash of genuine fear in the boy's eyes, before stubbornness overtook it. Okay. So it was going to be this way.

Ryuga moved like lightning, L-Drago Destructor out of its gauntlet and locked into the launcher in the space of a blink. The boy jerked back in surprise, clearly not expecting to suddenly find a bey pointed at his face, and scrambled to get his own blade ready.

"I'll show you what I can do, Ryuga!" he declared, head held high. "Three!"

"Two."

"One – _let it rip!"_

L-Drago Destructor tore through the low grass of the clearing and smashed into the yellow bey – yellow bey, almost-perfect cone base, Stamina type, was the boy _trying_ to imitate Yuu or was it just coincidence? - with all of its power. There was no use wasting time here. The boy managed to hold on for a scant couple of seconds, which said more for his stamina than Ryuga had expected, but then L-Drago Destructor slipped under the fusion wheel and flipped the whole bey into the air. It came down upside-down, stationary and defeated.

"There," Ryuga said, calling L-Drago Destructor back to him and resettling it in the gauntlet. "I've beaten you, _Legendary Blader_."

"Fine," said the boy, deflating somewhat as he bent over to pick up his bey. "I'm not really a Legendary Blader. I just wanted you to listen to me."

"I have better things to do than sit around chatting with one of Gingka's hangers-on. Now get lost."

The boy drew himself up to his full height again. "Ryuga! You will listen to my request! Please lend your power to Gingka and the others!"

 _No._

"I thought you said you'd do whatever I asked you to do when I won?" Ryuga pointed out, and the boy looked very awkward. "And I'm telling you to get lost." Now that the boy was closer, Ryuga could see him more clearly, and it wasn't looking too good. Of course, even at his full fighting strength he would never have been able to match Ryuga, but this was truly pathetic. The boy was clearly exhausted, and desperately thin in the way that suggested a sudden, sharp drop in the amount of food he'd been able to eat each day. It was obvious that he wasn't used to travelling in the wilds. Ryuga narrowed his eyes. "How long have you been trying to find me?"

The boy wouldn't meet his eyes. "Ever since Tsubasa told us you were a Legendary Blader and that you had another one with you. I… As soon as I heard that, I knew I could only do one thing to help Gingka and the others defeat the evil that's coming – I had to try to get you to listen to me, no matter what. We need your power. There's three, maybe four Legendary Bladers on our side now, but we know there's at least one on the bad guys' side and two more we don't know about. And then there's you two. I'm afraid I don't know much about you," here he turned to Tithi, who still hadn't said anything, but was watching the boy with a wary but steady expression. "Tsubasa told us your name but I can't remember it, I'm sorry. But if you're travelling with Ryuga you must be _amazing._ And Ryuga – your power's worth a hundred bladers. If you joined us, there would be no way we could lose!"

"So you still have nothing to offer me." Somehow that didn't surprise him.

"Offer?" The boy blinked at him. "Wh-what do you mean, Ryuga?"

"If for some strange reason I do listen to you and go with you, what do I get out of it?"

The boy flinched. "Um… you… save the world?"

Ryuga was aware that L-Drago was beginning to bubble through his voice again and didn't even bother to hide it. "And you? What do _you_ get if I come back with you?"

The boy stared. "Gingka will… I mean, everyone will be really happy with m… I mean, we'll be able to win for sure if you help us? Then the world won't fall into Darkness!"

Anger thundered through his spirit, eclipsing all thoughts of listening to anything the boy had to say. For a moment, he couldn't even speak, knowing that the sound that would leave his mouth would be nothing less than a dragon's roar. When he finally managed to form words, his voice was venomously cold. "If I go with you, _you_ will get _recognition from Gingka?_ Is _that_ what you're actually after?"

"No! I want to help save the world!"

But Ryuga had seen the guilty look in his eyes. "You keep telling yourself that, don't you? But you want Gingka to congratulate you. You want him to recognise your abilities because you managed to get me to listen to you. You're a little fish hoping the whale will call him a shark. I will tell you this one time and one time _only_ – I will never go with you."

"But _Ryuga-_ "

He didn't wait for the boy to finish whatever it was that he was saying, but turned on his heel and walked straight out of the clearing, leaving Tithi to gather all of their things together and scramble to catch up with him.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one.

 _Ryuga._ _The boy_ _is following us._

This was all starting to feel _very_ familiar. _He's not a Legendary Blader. I'm not letting him join us._

 _Tell me when you want to make the jump. I can carry you far from here in an instant._

 _Let him follow. I don't care. He will not be able to track us for long. Besides, he's of no interest to me._

"Why were you so horrible to him?" That voice was Tithi's, behind him somewhere but catching up fast until the pink-haired boy was half-jogging next to him. Ryuga kept his eyes fixed on the far mountains and didn't answer. "Ryuga! He asked you to help _save the world!_ "

"I don't care. I've already told Tsubasa I won't be helping them out. They have nothing to offer me, and I can't see any advantage to joining up with them even if I wanted to." He glanced sideways for a brief second and almost jumped. Tithi looked… _angry?_

"But we need to help! Isn't that what Mr Tsubasa said? That our power is for joining with the others and saving the world from the bad guys?"

 _Our_ power?

"You think I'd need _help_ to defeat these _evil-doers_?" Ryuga sneered. "I am the Dragon Emperor. I am the strongest blader on this planet, something you would do well to remember, kid. From the moment I claimed L-Drago as my own, everyone has wanted to use my power for themselves, and I tell you now, _none_ of them will get it."

"So you won't help anyone ever?" Tithi asked quietly.

"No."

"Then why did you help Yuu with his attack?"

The question was so unexpected that it briefly knocked Ryuga out of his looping, angry thoughts. "That was different," he said. "Yuu didn't ask for my help. He was merely in front of me, trying to become stronger by himself with no help from anyone. I just gave him a shove in the right direction. If fish boy had asked to follow me to make himself stronger so that he could challenge Gingka, or so that he could directly help him towards his goal, I _might_ have considered it, if he'd been slightly less useless at looking after himself. But he wanted the easy way out."

Tithi wasn't finished yet. "You helped me too. You let me come with you. You're teaching me how to find food safely. So why not him?"

Ryuga slowed down so that Tithi was no longer half-running next to him, and took a moment to consider his answer. Finally, he said "You've got something I'm interested in. Keeping you alive means I know where your power is. He doesn't have anything to offer me in return. He just wants to command my strength to do his will, just like everyone el-"

He stopped talking. That was revealing far too much. Tithi didn't have the right to know about that.

It was _his_ power, _his_ strength, _his_ dragon. He'd put in all the work to get L-Drago under control, putting his life on the line over and over again to gain what was rightfully his, and then Gingka sent useless little fish boys to find him so that he could just _borrow_ Ryuga's power whenever it suited him because he thought Ryuga would come when called like a good little _puppy_.

He… might have been a bit angrier about this than he had thought, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. Everyone wanted his powers, his abilities. First it had been the man he hated more than anyone else, seeking to master Ryuga as Ryuga sought to master the Darkness inside L-Drago. Then it had been Gingka's blue-haired friend, hunting him down in the depths of a volcano because Tsubasa had lost his spirit to the Darkness. Then the boy with the brown and yellow hair and the bey like a compass, and the city that flew once the scientists had stolen _his_ data. Even Tsubasa had asked him for help as soon as he figured out Ryuga had the power he had been looking for. And now this. Always, _always,_ he'd had people trailing after him, wanting all his strength with none of the work and, quite frankly, he was sick of it.

Ryuga didn't _help_ people.

He _didn't._

 _Except Yuu,_ L-Drago said helpfully.

It was in moments like this that Ryuga regretted being soul-bound to his dragon, who laughed at him as he hissed in rage. Tithi dropped back by a step, recognising by the way Ryuga was moving that he wasn't going to answer any more questions, certainly not on this topic.

They walked on in silence, L-Drago keeping track not only of their exceptionally poor follower, but also the gathering heaviness in the air. By the middle of the afternoon there was a storm building fast above them, and no real shelter for miles. Ryuga didn't care too much. L-Drago could keep him warm and light a fire when they found somewhere to rest, and Tithi had his poncho which could withstand most rainstorms. It wouldn't be the first storm they'd walked through, after all.

Tithi had noticed as well, redoubling his efforts to gather enough firewood for the night before the storm made it all wet and tucking it under the waterproof poncho. His mask hung on his back as always, and not for the first time, Ryuga wondered where it had actually come from. Not that he was actually interested, of course. Just curious.

There were a lot of things he found curious about Tithi, as frustrating as that was.

They had barely any warning in the end. One moment they were walking through the forest with the air thick with humidity, the next there was rain pouring down from the leaves and blowing into their faces as the wind picked up. Ryuga felt L-Drago stretch to spread a little more heat through him.

 _Ugh,_ Ryuga commented, but L-Drago ignored him – after all, he never actually had to deal with rain himself.

"Ugh," Tithi said next to him, hunching down into his poncho. "How long is the storm going to be, Ryuga?"

He knew what Tithi was actually asking – if the rain was going to continue for more than a couple of hours, Ryuga's preference was to find somewhere to hole up and wait it out. "The nearest shelter is miles away, kid," he said aloud. "We'll keep going. It'll pass before sunset."

"Oh. Okay." Tithi readjusted his poncho to cover the firewood better, then muttered "Rain's a lot nicer when you're not walking in it."

"Put up with it," Ryuga retorted, but there was no real aggression in it. Rain _was_ a lot nicer when you weren't walking in it, at least rain like this.

 _Stop complaining,_ L-Drago sighed.

 _You don't have to walk in this, L-Drago._

 _No, I don't._ L-Drago sounded _smug._ Ryuga rolled his eyes and pushed the sense of his dragon away. He kept the warmth, though.

It was nearly an hour before the rain stopped, and another half hour before it stopped dripping on them from the trees. Ryuga shook the water out of his hair and ignored the tiny wisps of steam from his shirt as L-Drago's fire began to dry him off. Tithi took off his poncho and slung it over his back over the mask so that it flapped in the wind. They would definitely need a proper fire tonight to dry everything out completely, so Ryuga and L-Drago began keeping an eye out for suitable places to stop long before they usually would.

In the end, they reached the edge of the forest before they found a proper shelter, coming up against a wide ravine with a river far below them. Ryuga jumped it easily enough, and after a few minutes of searching Tithi found a fallen tree lying across the gap with just enough strength to act as a bridge. On the far side, the trees petered out into grass. The place they had crossed the ravine had obviously slipped down years before, because a tall cliff of reddish mud and grey stone rose up above the trees, and at the base of it Ryuga could just make out the shadow of a cave.

"Over there," he said aloud. Tithi just nodded.

It was a bit further away than he had thought, out of sight of the ravine. It also wasn't actually a cave, but a shallow depression in the rock just deep enough to have kept the ground right inside it dry and nothing else. But it was the best – and driest – place L-Drago could find for miles, and there was no point pushing on too much further in the hope of finding somewhere the dragon had overlooked unless they wanted to sleep in a tree.

Tithi immediately set about finding a flat area to build their fire for the night, doing his best to keep the wood dry as he did so. Ryuga busied himself making supports to hang their damp clothes from so that they could start drying as soon as Tithi had finished.

The setting sun lit up their small camp in all the colours of L-Drago's scales and Ryuga closed his eyes to allow the last vestiges of heat to wash over him. The storm had blown away all the clouds, and the whole sky was alight. He loved this time of day, he had to admit, the sky turning to fire and warmth before fading away, when limbs were satisfied with a day's work well done and sleep seemed like a welcome rest rather than a lurking shadow.

When he opened his eyes, Tithi was pulling out his beyblade to light the fire.

"You've forgotten about the wind, kid," Ryuga called. "Go the other side of the fire or the flames won't catch. Block the wind with your body."

Tithi nodded once, expression very serious, and did as instructed. Really, he was picking things up very quickly, Ryuga thought. He might end up becoming someone halfway competent in a few months, as long as he didn't die of mushroom poisoning first.

 _Your fish boy is still following us,_ L-Drago said quietly. _He may take some time. He cannot find the fallen tree to cross the gorge, and is trying to swing across with a vine._

 _Stupid,_ Ryuga groaned. _He thinks he can follow me using storybook tropes. Wonderful._

 _Ah. He has found the fallen tree. He does not trust it the way that Tithi did, though._

Ryuga felt a ripple of irritation flutter through him. One person deciding to follow him around was bad enough, having a second person follow him just for the purposes of trying to persuade him to lend his power to someone else was infuriating. _I am not letting him stay here._

Tithi looked up as Ryuga shrugged off his coat and draped it over the rough stand he'd built. "Ryuga? Is something wrong?"

Either Tithi was getting far too good at reading him, or Ryuga was being far too obvious. "No. Hand me your bag, let me see what we've got for food."

They'd eaten the stew at lunchtime, so it was just nuts, berries and a couple of root vegetables that Ryuga had found just before the storm – and the mangoes, of course. Ryuga made a mental note to find a river and hopefully some fish the next day, and quickly split most of their stores into two piles, keeping back a handful of nuts and a few mangoes each in case of emergency.

 _Here he comes._

Ryuga and Tithi both looked up as the boy slowly came into view, limping slightly. For a minute or so, he didn't seem to notice them under the shelter of the cliff. When he got close enough that their fire became unmistakeable, he halted and stared at them wordlessly. Then, apparently too exhausted to care, he dropped down a few metres away from their fire and started gathering twigs and wood together in a pile. Ryuga snarled under his breath and started to stand up to force the boy out of his camp, but something caught at his coat – Tithi was on his feet and had grabbed hold of the sleeve.

"Can't he stay here for tonight?"

Ryuga fixed Tithi with a glare. "What did you say to me?"

Tithi dropped his eyes, but drew his shoulders back so that he was standing at his full height. "It's dark now. There's no other good places for miles, that's why we stopped at this one. He can sleep over there and we can sleep over here."

Irritatingly, Tithi was correct. The actual depression under the cliff was too small, but the general area they were in _was_ large enough for all of them. And there was no way the boy would find somewhere safer than this to stay. "Fine," Ryuga snapped. "I won't chase him off. Happy?"

Tithi nodded and went back to the fire. Ryuga frowned as he sat back down and stared at his companion. He wasn't entirely sure how it had got to this. Yes, Tithi had a point, but when had he decided he was allowed to ask Ryuga for favours? Especially considering everything they had talked about earlier. Maybe that meeting with Yuu had given him more confidence than Ryuga had thought, though if that was true it had taken a long time to flower into something useful.

To distract himself, he turned to watch the boy setting up _his_ fire, and was immediately unimpressed. The boy couldn't even use his bey to light it, instead trying to use two pieces of wood. Another storybook trope which only worked with great skill and technique, neither of which the boy had. The wood pile was small and wet enough that even L-Drago would have struggled to light it, and Ryuga couldn't see any spare wood anywhere. Was this really all the boy had gathered? Honestly. How pathetic.

He wasn't going to last the night.

Ryuga had been paying such close attention to the boy that he almost didn't notice Tithi getting up from the fire and coming to stand in front of him. "Ryuga?"

"What _now?_ "

Tithi swallowed, but didn't look cowed at all. "I can hear his stomach growling. And his bag's completely flat. He's got no food."

Not the only thing the boy didn't have. Ryuga was about to ask him what his point was when he recognised the look in Tithi's eyes. He was about to ask a question, and Ryuga had a nasty idea what that question was.

"Do what you like with _your_ food," Ryuga growled, making it clear what he meant – the boy wouldn't be getting anything beyond what Tithi shared with him from his own portion of their stores. Tithi looked shocked that Ryuga had apparently read his mind, but nodded, picking up the three mangoes in his share and quietly walking over to the boy, putting the fruit down before retreating silently. The boy's eyes lit up with desperate hope, and after a barely-audible thanks, fell on the food with the enthusiasm of the starving.

Well, that confirmed at least one of Ryuga's suspicions. No food, probably for a long time.

Once dinner, such as it was, was finished, and everything cleaned and tidied up, Tithi rolled himself up in his poncho and quickly fell asleep. Even L-Drago settled down earlier than usual, observing their new companion through Ryuga's eyes and humming a strange little disjointed song as he watched. Ryuga himself absently polished L-Drago Destructor, making sure that not even the tiniest bit of rain had got into it through the gauntlet, but most of his attention was on the boy.

It was pretty clear that the green-haired boy was in trouble. He was shivering violently, face gaunt and exhausted, clothes soaked from the rain. His pack was wet through as well, ruining any food or dry clothes he might have had stashed in there – not that it was likely that he had anything left, considering how hungrily he'd devoured the mangoes. Freezing, starving, exhausted, and probably dehydrated too – what had he been _thinking,_ coming after Ryuga with so few preparations?

Ryuga considered his options. Obviously he wasn't going to do what the boy asked – he'd had quite enough of getting Gingka out of his own messes, and Gingka would probably be very much against Ryuga's plan to find out how the power of the Star Fragments actually worked. Ryuga didn't work _with_ people anyway.

L-Drago suddenly chuckled in his head, reading his fleeting thoughts. _Ryuga, are you really considering helping him_ _out_ _just because you know Yuu is friendly with him? That was long ago._ _Your heart is softer_ _than I remember_ _._

 _Don't be ridiculous, L-Drago,_ Ryuga retorted. _I don't care what happens to him. He set out to do something and he has failed. But throwing people aside and abandoning them just because they were no longer useful was what Dark Nebula did. I refuse to make that my legacy too._

 _So you're going to help him._

 _I'm not. I'm just going to give him advice. It's not the first time I've done that for Gingka's little gang, after all. Whether he takes it or not is up to him. Not my responsibility._

"Fish boy."

The boy looked up, apparently surprised to be addressed. "My name's-"

"I don't care. Come here." Their fire was big enough, after all, and there was no point shouting across the clearing if he didn't have to. The boy stood up and came closer, arms wrapped around his chest in a desperate attempt to keep some warmth in his body. Ryuga jerked his chin and the boy sat down again with a bump, body curling towards the fire almost instinctively. Ryuga just watched as the shivering slowly eased and the boy loosened his arms to hold his hands out towards the flames. When he finally seemed to realise what he was doing and looked up at Ryuga guiltily, Ryuga fixed him with a look.

"Go back to Gingka." It was the kindest thing he could say. "You won't survive out here. Go home."

He'd expected an argument. He hadn't expected the boy to start _crying._

"I _can't_ ," he sobbed. "I can't go back and just _fail!_ I promised I'd be helpful to Gingka. I promised I'd be able to do something to help save the world and gather the Legendary Bladers before it's too late. I don't want the world to fall into Darkness!"

 _He's the second person to tell me that,_ Ryuga muttered to L-Drago, who huffed in irritation. _It's not as if_ I _want_ _it either._

The boy hadn't stopped talking. "I know I'm not a Legendary Blader, and I'm not very strong and I can't do all the things that Gingka and Kyouya and you and even Tsubasa and Yuu can do, but I can do this. I can find people and bring them together. It's all I can do now. So _please_ come back with me and help Gingka and the others."

Ryuga shook his head. "Look at me, fish boy. You don't know what you're doing out here. It's a miracle you've survived as long as you have. I don't need another person tagging along behind me, especially one who doesn't know what he's doing."

"Tithi's travelling with you. Even if you don't let me travel with you, I'll just follow you, forever if I have to! Didn't I manage to do it today?"

Ryuga resisted the temptation to sigh. "That kid knows how to exist out here. He's survived in the wilderness for years. If I disappeared, he wouldn't have any trouble finding food, water, shelter and warmth. You're determined, I'll give you that. But you're weak, and your inexperience will kill you out here. You can't find food, you can't light fires, you've lost most of your possessions if you even brought any in the first place, and you're completely unprepared. Worst of all, you don't know when to stop. Gingka's probably told you that never giving up is the only way to win a battle, but out here it doesn't work like that. You don't know your own limits, and you're on your own with no-one to help you. If you hadn't run into us when you did, you'd have been dead within a week at best. You're dying, fish boy. Go home _._ "

"I can learn!"

Ryuga closed his eyes briefly. "Trust me, fish boy. You don't have time for that. You're freezing to death. You need warmth. Unless you can build a windbreak or a full-sized fire in the next hour or so, your body will shut down overnight from hypothermia. You promised you'd do whatever I told you if you lost our battle. So I'm telling you, as nicely as I can – _go home."_

"But if you don't help, the world will–"

"Gingka can sort it out on his own." Ryuga interrupted. "He always does. He shouldn't need to use _my_ power to fix _his_ problems, especially if he can't be bothered to come and ask me himself." He gave the boy a quick glance. "Or at least send a _competent_ messenger."

The boy dropped his head. "Gingka doesn't know I'm here. He thinks I just went off for training."

Ryuga wasn't about to tell this fish-boy what he had said to Tithi about allowing the boy to follow them if he had wanted to get stronger for his own sake. That would only give him ideas. "Gingka always seems to care so much about his friends, what do you think he'd say if he found out what a state you were in?" It was unlike Ryuga to be this kind, but despite his distaste for Gingka's usual gang he wasn't _evil._

"Won't you help us at all, then?"

"Why should I? It's not my fight. I'm not going to help Gingka, and do you really think these _evil-doers_ are going to be able to persuade me to _join_ them?"

The boy opened his mouth as if to say _yes,_ and then snapped it shut again. "I don't know. You never do what I expect you to do, Ryuga."

That was… unexpected, but oddly complimentary. Ryuga sighed. "You can stay by this fire for tonight. Despite what you might think, I don't actually want to kill you off. Tomorrow, we'll go one way and you will go the other. Go back to Gingka. Or go and find Yuu or Tsubasa, I don't care. But don't follow me. I won't help you again."

"What about Tithi? He helped me. If he showed me how to be good enough to follow you, could I come with you?"

Ryuga let just the tiniest spark of L-Drago's flame ripple through his voice, making it ring with power. "So I tell you that you can't survive out here on your own, and your reply is that you can because you'll rely on someone you met less than four hours ago, who can barely keep up with me himself, for food and warmth and shelter? You're _pathetic_."

The boy tried to meet his eyes. Perhaps in another time and place, when he wasn't freezing, exhausted, starving and at the end of his physical and mental strength, he could have held Ryuga's gaze as the dragon stared through him, making the air around them hum with threat. There was a spark of defiance there still, that might have been a flame large enough to stand firm if the boy had had any more fight left in him.

But he didn't. The boy blinked and looked away, hunching his shoulders up defensively. "I know," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I just… I had to help _somehow._ This was all I could think of."

"I'll tell you what I told Tsubasa, little fish. I'm doing what _I_ want to do. Not what Gingka wants. Not what these 'bad guys' want. Not what you want. It'll be a lot easier for everyone if you just let this go."

All the resistance had gone out of the boy now, and even the spark of determination had been snuffed out. "O-okay," he whispered. "I said I'd do whatever you asked me to do if you beat me. So I'll go back. Maybe I can help Gingka find the rest of the Legendary Bladers."

Ryuga shrugged. "I don't care what you do afterwards. Just leave. Don't ever try to follow me again, fish boy. I won't be so merciful next time."

.

The next morning was _beautiful._ The sky was clear and blue, the sun was delightfully warm, and everything pointed towards it being a good day. Even L-Drago was enthusiastic, swimming through Ryuga's thoughts and curling warm through his blood with no complaints.

In the midst of all this, Ryuga found himself at the edge of their camp, looking down what had once been a proper path. It hadn't been obvious the night before, the definition of the path hidden by the dusk, but it split not far beyond the camp-site. The wider part headed directly west, whilst a narrower and more over-grown portion pointed more northwards, towards a line of hills.

 _That way,_ L-Drago whispered in his ear. _It is still far away, but it is in that direction._

 _Good._

Beside him, shifting nervously from foot to foot, was the green-haired boy, already wearing his empty pack and wrapped in his now-dry but still tattered cloak. He had been the last to wake up, which hadn't surprised Ryuga at all, and hadn't said a word since thanking Tithi for giving him one more mango for breakfast. In the morning light he didn't look quite as hopeless, so he would probably make it back to civilisation without too much trouble.

 _Probably._

 _Hush, L-Drago._

"The nearest town is two hours' walk that way," Ryuga said aloud, indicating the path to the west as L-Drago quietly reported on the closest area with a large number of people in it. "As long as you're not stupid and fall off a cliff or get eaten by a tiger, you should reach it without any problems."

"Tigers?" Tithi asked, looking up from where he was clearing the ashes of their fire. "There's tigers here?"

"Of course there are," Ryuga said. "But they won't bother with a toothpick like fish boy."

"Wait, Kenta's leaving?" Of course. Tithi had been asleep for all of their conversation the night before. "Why aren't we going with him?"

"Because I don't team up with people. I'm going to find the next Star Fragment, and you're staying with me because I need yours for comparison too."

"But we have to -"

"I don't _have_ to do anything. And you're coming with me, so _we_ don't have to do anything either."

Tithi looked bullish for a second, but Ryuga let L-Drago push through until he loomed over both of the younger boys, and they shrank back.

"I'll… I'll go," the green-haired boy said quietly. "I'll tell Gingka what you said. I hope you change your mind about helping us. But if not, I hope the bad guys don't find you. Bye, Tithi. It was nice to meet you."

"Stay safe!" Tithi called after him as he headed towards the western path. "Bye, Kenta!"

Ryuga waited until the boy was almost out of sight before turning to Tithi. "Come on. We're going north. L-Drago thinks we're about a week away from the nearest fragment now, we should get a move on."

Tithi slung his mask and bag onto his back again and offered Ryuga what might have been a shy grin. "Okay! Let's go, Ryuga!"

 _Strange child,_ Ryuga murmured to his dragon, who laughed at him before giving a nudge in the right direction. Time to set off again.

It was odd, but somehow he felt like he hadn't seen the last of the boy. Ryuga shook the thought off. If he ever tried following Ryuga again, he really would use the lightning and jump away from him, no matter how tired it left him. Let fish boy try to track him through the _air._

But for now, it was back to being just him and Tithi walking together.

And again it was odd, but it was starting to feel… _right._

.

* * *

 _A/N:_ _I was immensely disappointed in the English dub for not using the phrase "Gingka's fishy little friends" in Kenta's Determination when he gets the imagine-spot where Kenta and Benkei are jellyfish, Yuki is a crab and Kyouya is a merman (why would they go with "waterboy" misheard as "water-toy". That's ridiculous). So now I use it every chance I get,_ _and so Kenta_ _got_ _to be_ _called_ _"fish boy" or "little fish"._

 _I also want to make it clear that Kenta absolutely would have pulled off what he did in Kenta's Determination if this had been_ _with_ _in the original timeframe._ _But by the time he finds Ryuga here, he's been on his own for a couple of weeks with the pathetic survival skills Ryuga noted in this chapter (those are canon!). Ryuga is being as kind as I can make him, because he's got to save Kenta's life here. Kenta is_ _ **dying**_ _. There is no way he could be strong enough to get Ryuga to pay attention to his request in his state, especially as it's a request that Ryuga's already refused once from a much stronger and much more competent blader that Ryuga respects enough to actually name._

 _Don't worry, though! Kenta's still got a part to play! I'm not going to let his 3rd-season character development go to waste._


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

It had not been a week.

It had been two and a half weeks, and the Star Fragment was still nowhere near him. L-Drago was as frustrated as Ryuga was, but for all he could tell, the fragment was _moving._

 _Peace, Ryuga._ L-Drago's command was continuous and really rather hypocritical at this point. _We will find it. I have never let you down before and I will not let you down now._

Ryuga just sent back something like a push and something like a grumble, and settled into his usual cross-legged position to start checking L-Drago Destructor for damage. He hadn't battled anyone since Fish Boy, but he'd spent part of that afternoon using his bey to cut a path through an enormous landslide that had buried their path. He could have jumped over it, of course, but there was something so satisfying about smashing the rocks and earth apart after so long doing _nothing_. L-Drago had had just as much fun as Ryuga, but it meant he needed to check over his blade just in case some of the dirt had got trapped in the lower layers.

 _One breath in._

 _One breath out._

He could hear the thousands and thousands of insects and animals that filled and surrounded the forest clearing they had set up camp in. L-Drago had reported seeing scorpions and snakes in the grass. Not one to be turned back by something like that, Ryuga was more than prepared to sleep on the ground _anyway_ _,_ but the realisation that Tithi didn't exactly have an omnipresent and extremely powerful dragon on his side to keep watch through the night had led to him weaving two crude hammocks out of vines and leaves, and stringing them between the trees. That at least would keep the most dangerous animals away from them, if it wouldn't stop all of them.

The soft creaking from his right was Tithi swinging happily in his hammock, never questioning the strength of the vines and leaves, or even Ryuga's knots, trusting his new bed as implicitly as he trusted the ground. It was a strange feeling, something that someone who wasn't Ryuga might have described as _reassuring,_ seeing that someone else trusted his things as much as he did.

 _One breath in._

 _One breath out._

The fire kept away most of the other animals who might not be too happy at the invasion of their home, and gave Ryuga just enough light to see the tiny pieces of chipped stone buried under the fusion wheel. Carefully, he dug them out and tossed them aside as L-Drago stretched luxuriously through his thoughts. It was good to be somewhere that they could almost… well, almost _relax_ for once.

Not that Ryuga was actually _relaxed._ He could hear every rustle, smell the animals around them through L-Drago's senses, see the heat of the fire as it built in the heart of the wood and kindling they'd gathered, taste woodsmoke and ash on the air. Beneath his own skin, he could feel the pulse of his dragon as L-Drago swam through his veins, filling every inch of him without pushing too far into Ryuga's sense of self.

 _Not tonight, L-Drago._

 _As you wish, Ryuga._

The repairs were easy, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to at least stop in the next town that looked like it might have a decent beyblading shop and pick up some more supplies. He might be the Dragon Emperor, but he couldn't produce metal filler out of nowhere (well, unless he had a volcano to hand, and those seemed to be thin on the ground right now).

By the time he pulled all the way out of the meditation and returned to his own senses rather than the enhanced ones of the dragon, Tithi was already asleep, wrapped up in his poncho.

 _He gets stronger,_ L-Drago murmured. _Not as strong as us of course, but stronger._

 _The longer we wait to take the Star Fragment, the more of his power we will get, is that what you're saying?_

 _Not exactly. But he might be an interesting opponent one day. His defences are… magnificent, and that's coming from_ me.

 _I think you're giving him too much credit,_ Ryuga said, stacking the fire so that the burning wood wouldn't set light to the surrounding area. L-Drago didn't reply, so Ryuga decided the conversation was ended and settled himself into his own hammock, tugging the edges of his coat over him.

Sleeping in the hammock was easier than he'd anticipated. It wasn't as hard or unyielding as the ground, and if he'd been anyone but Ryuga he might have said it was _better_. But Ryuga had no particular preference either way. It was a place to sleep, that was all. Being comfortable or not never came into his thoughts for places to rest. After all, being comfortable would just make him go soft, and then he would have no chance of controlling his dragon. To keep his beloved blade running with him at full strength, he needed to be as hard and unyielding as dragon scales, no matter the cost.

But he could just about see the stars through the waving leaves of the trees, and as they flickered in and out of view overhead he couldn't quite help hoping that there might be more nights like this.

.

The campsite was quiet when he awoke. _Too_ quiet. He couldn't even hear Tithi breathing.

Prepared to be annoyed that L-Drago hadn't woken him up early enough to be up before the younger boy, he rolled over to see Tithi's bag and mask lying in the grass, but the hammock was empty and the boy himself nowhere in sight.

How strange.

Ryuga pushed away the surge of unease and sat up, pulling a rather unhappy-looking green snake from the dip of his shoulder where it had apparently been warming up. He scowled at it and flung it into the brush before getting to his feet and looking around more carefully to see if he could find any trace of Tithi. Seeing nothing immediately out of place, he shrugged. Tithi had probably just gone to answer nature's call and he of all people knew how sharp Ryuga's senses could be so he tended to go further than strictly necessary.

Munching on a handful of the nuts they had toasted the night before, Ryuga started gathering together the small things he had left out to dry overnight, packing them into pockets and undoing the vine hammocks so that all evidence of their passing was gone. It took him about twenty minutes, including the time he took to clear the fire away and scatter the ashes, but Tithi still hadn't come back and now he was getting -

 _No, I'm_ not _concerned about him. I just want to know where he's gone because I need his Star Fragment._

 _Maybe he's decided to leave on his own,_ L-Drago said. _We've been travelling for much longer than you told him. Maybe he went back to find Yuu._

Ryuga looked around the campsite and shook his head. _He'd never leave that mask behind. Or –_

Something was glinting in the grassy shadows next to the mask. Ryuga picked it up, and then nearly dropped it in surprise. In his hands was a small, familiar, yellow beyblade.

 _Quetzalcoatl,_ L-Drago said.

 _No blader leaves their blade behind anywhere,_ Ryuga said grimly. _He didn't leave, not on his own._

 _But I heard nothing all night. I would have felt it if anyone had approached us._

 _Anyone? Or any_ blader?

L-Drago snarled suddenly, anger creeping into his mental voice as he hissed _They left the blade behind so I wouldn't feel Quetzalcoatl leave. Whoever took the boy left their own blades outside my range so I wouldn't hear them either. They knew I was here, they knew I was on guard!_

 _So this was planned._ Ryuga scowled at the yellow bey in his hands. _Whoever did this knows your abilities – and mine. They must have come in completely silently, without beys or constellations, and taken him in the middle of the night. To think that someone could get past_ our _guard…_

 _Let me hunt them,_ L-Drago growled. _Let me tear them apart. Let me show them why no-one steals from the Dragon Emperor._

 _Later,_ Ryuga ordered, mind running quicksilver through his options. _Find them first. I want to know who they are and what else they know before we destroy them._ He closed his fingers over Quetzalcoatl, and felt the faintest whisper of static against his skin as the blade reacted to his presence. Now he had it in his hands, he could truly examine the power it held within if he wanted. It would be the work of minutes or less to claim it as his own.

But something made him hesitate. The blade still belonged to Tithi, and that meant it was a link to the missing boy. _Quetzalcoatl can help you find him,_ he said to L-Drago. _He will be able to follow his blader._

 _North-east,_ L-Drago said after a pause. _I can get us close enough._

Ryuga's coat tugged at his throat as it lifted in the sudden surge of electricity as L-Drago's red lightning spiralled around him, but Ryuga was too preoccupied with aligning his will with L-Drago's to care.

 _Let us find those who have violated our sanctuary. Let us reveal our strength to those who dared to step within our kingdom. Let them fear us._

.

When the lightning unfurled, it took him a second or two to get his bearings. He was in the centre of a clearing that looked not too different to the one he had just left, and there was no-one in sight.

 _L-Drago,_ he began, but the dragon was already moving.

 _They are about five minutes away,_ he replied. _We can come up on them unawares from this direction. Hurry. They have a helicopter. They could move at any moment._

Now Ryuga understood the soft throbbing sound in his ears. He strode forwards, barely sparing enough thought to make sure that he was making as little noise as possible. If these people, whoever they were, were able to creep up on _him_ , the Dragon Emperor, with all the abilities he had at his disposal, they were more dangerous than most.

Something in his mind thrilled at the idea of facing something that was a genuine threat for once.

L-Drago was almost dragging him forwards by the time he found the helicopter. Its blades were whirling just slowly enough that it clearly wasn't going to take off immediately, but it wasn't going to be long.

Just out of reach of the blades' downdraft was a huddle of five people. Ryuga barely glanced at the four tall ones – one in a white robe, two in brown cloaks and one in what looked at first to be a black _tailcoat_ of all things. It was the smallest of the group that caught his attention, struggling with all of his might to get away from the grip of the largest stranger.

The thing in Ryuga's head that had been so excited about fighting a new threat went deathly quiet. In its place, something _huge_ roared defiance and rage. _They had Tithi._

Dropping all pretence of creeping up on the new threat, Ryuga strode out of the trees as confidently as he would walk into a beystadium. As if he was going to let them take the wielder of the only other Star Fragment he'd found so far. L-Drago sang a sudden warning in his head, but Ryuga paid no attention to it, too preoccupied with taking back what was rightfully his.

And then -

"Well, now," said a voice that was so horrendously familiar that for a second Ryuga's brain skipped back a couple of years to a place he never wanted to go to again. "If it isn't young Master Ryuga, out for a stroll."

It would have taken much more self control than Ryuga had to stop the growl that rumbled low in his throat from becoming audible as he finally focused on the face of the man just to Tithi's left. _No._ It _couldn't_ be _._ They'd left him for dead, broken his spirit and soul and body and _left him_ in that place he only visited in the worst of his nightmares.

It _couldn't_ be him.

But it was.

" _Doji,_ " he spat. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, never you mind," the old mastermind of Dark Nebula said, waving one hand regally. "You'll find out soon enough, I know!"

Ryuga scowled and pulled L-Drago Destructor from its gauntlet. If only Tithi wasn't so close to the helicopter, he could blow it away with ease, and conveniently take Doji with it. But already he was limited to what he could do, even to _this_ man, the orchestrator of everything that had ever gone wrong in his life.

"Go!" the man in the white robe shouted, and the helicopter blades accelerated, the wind from their downdraught pushing Ryuga back as Doji hopped up into the aircraft, pulling Tithi and the tallest stranger in the brown cloak with him. With a snarl, Ryuga forced his way forwards, but the other two strangers blocked his path.

"Get out of my way!"

"As if," the white-robed one sneered. "That kid's far more useful to us than you – why do you even want him in the first place?"

"As if I'd tell you," Ryuga growled. " _Move._ "

The other stranger pulled out a blade in a launcher and aimed it straight at Ryuga's face. "I will not let you pass me," he said, as if declaring some kind of ritual challenge, and Ryuga let his eyes flick over him. Red hair, brown cape – nope, not ringing any bells. So that meant either Ryuga had never met the guy before, or he'd forgotten him.

"And you are?"

The other man pulled himself up to his full height, still a few inches shy of Ryuga. "My name is Bao. I lead the Beylin Fist, and I challenge you to face me."

Beylin… Beylin… where had he heard that name before? It was right on the edge of his memory, but L-Drago was too busy shrieking war-cries at Doji to really care about digging around in Ryuga's brain to find the answer for him.

" _ _Get out of my way.__ _"_ Ryuga let as much of the dragon seep into his voice as he could, but to his amazement (and, right in the depths of his heart, a grudging respect), the man held his ground.

"Battle me," Bao shouted over the roar of the helicopter, and Ryuga let his face twist into a snarl as the whirling blades finally began to produce enough lift to raise the helicopter off the ground. Fight, or get Tithi…

 _I can track him still,_ L-Drago said, ceasing his war cries for a second to turn his attention to the battle Ryuga was faced with. _Perhaps they will lead us somewhere more interesting. And they do not know how fast I can really travel._

 _I won't leave him in Doji's clutches,_ Ryuga snarled back. _I wouldn't leave a gnat in that snake's care._

 _I like snakes,_ L-Drago said mildly.

 _F_ _ine, that poisonous mushroom._

 _Better._ L-Drago shifted in his head, attention focusing on Bao. _Now then. Let u_ _ _s__ _see what this little scrap of a thing can do._

He wasn't going to deign to give the red-haired man a count-down, just raised his bey in its launcher and let his movements make his intentions clear. Bao actually _grinned._

"Let it rip!"

" _No,_ Bao, wait!" That was the man in the white robe, but Bao ignored him, launching at the same moment as Ryuga, his bright red blade immediately rushing to meet him head-on. A risky strategy, but one that fitted an unknown opponent like Ryuga – as long as that opponent wasn't _actually_ Ryuga.

The blade was fast, that was for certain. And there was definitely some power behind the blow. But it wasn't enough to actually affect L-Drago, much to Bao's clear shock. L-Drago Destructor stood its ground as the red blade connected, and took the full force of the speed the other bey could move with. Whoever this man Bao was, he was no amateur. He had a powerful blade and knew how to use it to its best ability. How very interesting. But there was no real sense of power within the blade. Oh, it was strong and fast, that was very clear, but the deeper power that they had been seeking was nowhere to be found.

 _Of course not,_ L-Drago snapped mulishly. _I would have told you if he had a Star Fragment._

Bao pulled his bey away from the clash, sending it back to gather speed for another attack. Ryuga didn't really feel like getting hit again, so he swung L-Drago Destructor into a lazy loop that slipped smoothly away from the red bey, the fusion wheels curling away from each other.

"What?" The red-haired man's eyes went wide. "How did you do that, there's no way a bey can move like that unless..." He stared at Ryuga in something approaching horror. "You're using reverse rotation. But that's impossible, unless… you're him, aren't you?"

 _ _So nice to know we have fans,__ L-Drago said with something almost approaching a laugh, and not a friendly one.

"Well, isn't this nice, _mrow_?" The man with the white robe had his hands dangling loosely in front of him, but there was still an air of tension about him as if he would be ready to spring at a moment's notice. "I thought I'd misheard because of the helicopter, but no. You're Ryuga!"

Ryuga allowed himself a split second to glare at the interruption. "What's it to you?"

But the man's eyes just narrowed to slits. Then, to Ryuga's utter disgust, he pulled a launcher out of nowhere and launched a large golden beyblade into the battle as well.

 _He cheats,_ L-Drago snarled, angrier at that than he had been at the kidnapping of Tithi. _How dare he try to insult us like that. Let me rip his life apart, let me_ destroy _him..._

 _We don't need to use that attack for this,_ Ryuga said, managing to reign his unruly dragon back with considerable effort. _They're not worth it._ He let the tiniest curl of his spirit brush against his dragon's scales. _Get them, L-Drago._

His dragon howled something guttural and horrifying as he poured of the blade, filling the sky and arcing high over the battlers like a demonic rainbow. Bao's eyes went very wide and he tried to scramble his blade backwards, but the golden blade was in the way and the two barely missed each other.

"So you want to play like _that,_ _mrow_?" the white-robed man snapped. "Fine then. Lynx, get him!"

The lithe little thing that pounced from the golden blade was nothing compared to the levels of confidence his blader was giving off. Ryuga could have laughed. Compared to Leone, who was only just worthy of not being called a kitty-cat, this was a pampered kitten. And, of course, Leone was _nothing_ compared to L-Drago.

"Hades Crown, _Flash Attack!_ "

Or at least, he would be nothing if he didn't have the most annoyingly persistent backup. Ryuga scowled as the red blade flashed out of _nowhere_ to slam into L-Drago once again, this time with an enormous blast of red light that towered into the sky like a signal and made even Ryuga blink. Good job he didn't just rely on sight in battle. Hades Crown was fast and nimble, there was no question of that. The problem was, it had to be light in order to dash around like that, and light blades had one very, very significant disadvantage against Ryuga's much heavier L-Drago Destructor.

It took barely more than a thought for him to dig L-Drago Destructor's triple-dragons beneath the fusion wheel of the other's blade and hurl it high into the air.

"Hades Crown!"

What he _hadn't_ been expecting was for the blade to come down the right way up and keep spinning, albeit with a brief wobble. Ryuga gave his opponent a more apprising look. Definitely someone worthy of keeping an eye on, if he was this confident with a bey that was clearly inferior to his opponent's. He was about to make the same move with a little more force when the golden bey came hurtling around to crash into L-Drago Destructor with all its might.

Now, _here_ was a bey that had actual power. Still not the power Ryuga was searching for, but the hits were bigger than Bao's, even if they were sluggish compared to both Hades Crown and L-Drago Destructor. It was easy to keep him off, even when Bao managed to get his act together and push Hades Crown back into the match.

If it hadn't been for the fact that L-Drago was distantly keeping a tab on where Tithi was, which was rapidly getting further and further away from them, Ryuga would have almost enjoyed taking his time defeating the two opponents. They were more interesting than Gingka and his gang after all, and had a reasonable level of skill, so they might even think they would manage to stand a chance against him. Not that they had any hope of actually doing that, of course.

 _Best to just make sure they know that._

 _L-Drago, show them._

Someone who wasn't watching his bey very closely wouldn't even have seen the slight movement of the fusion wheel as the triple dragons gave a tiny but nonetheless devastating push to both beys simultaneously. Hades Crown reeled backwards, whilst the golden one scrambled away, staggering under the unexpected assault. Once again it only took a couple of seconds for the red bey to regain its balance, though this time it stayed further back to avoid having to take so much damage again. The golden bey was circling as its owner frowned.

"For someone to be able to fight against both me _and_ Bao at the same time means you must have a lot more power than most," he said. "I mean, we've _all_ heard of the great and wonderful Ryuga and his oh-so-special bey, but that's not all it is, is it? You've got something _more._ "  
What did this strange, cat-like man know? "What are you babbling about?"

The man's eyes sharpened at his words. "You're a Legendary Blader, aren't you?"

 _He knows,_ L-Drago whispered. _He knows, and more than we do._

 _Let's get him._

The golden blade was exactly where he wanted it to be, heavily trundling along at the side of the faster, lighter red blade. Ryuga's eyes curled into cruel slits and he ordered his blade forward on a collision course with both opponents. The red one darted to the side to avoid another massive hit, but the gold one carried on its lumbering course. Perfect. Ryuga could almost taste the victory on his tongue…

He _missed._

 _WHAT!_ L-Drago shrieked, more infuriated by that than by anything else so far. _What just happened?_

 _Do it again,_ Ryuga ordered. _He'll think we don't learn but I just need to see it one more time._

L-Drago Destructor whirled around and raced after the gold blade. This time, Ryuga completely ignored Hades Crown and kept his eyes fixed on the Lynx.

It was so quick that he almost missed it even with all his attention on it. As L-Drago Destructor bore down on the blade, the spin-track height changed with a snap – _up-down -_ letting the lower spin track of L-Drago Destructor slide past it with no damage taken.

His opponent was a _coward._

Ryuga's blood boiled. At least Bao and Hades Crown had been trying to fight even as they dodged, using that tremendous speed to come at him from all directions. This was… this was _playing,_ the way a cat might toy with something it didn't want to eat.

Well, the kitty-cat was about to learn what happened when it tried to eat a dragon.

"L-Drago!"

His dragon roared a challenge that shook birds out of the trees, and the little golden cat actually hesitated for a fatal instant. L-Drago was on it in a flash, obliterating it in a wave of red fire that conveniently picked up Hades Crown and hurled both it and the golden bey into the trees where they clattered to a halt.

" _Move,_ " Ryuga said.

Neither of his opponents did as he told them. Bao was staring at him in what could only be described as horror, eyes flicking between Ryuga and the tree line where his bey lay motionless. Fine. If they didn't want to move, Ryuga would move _them._

"Wait!" the man with the white robe called as Ryuga took a step towards them. "Wait, just listen to me, _mrow_!"  
What was with the cat noises? He'd thought Kyouya was annoying for always shouting about being a lion, but this was just ridiculous. " _What?_ "

"Lend us your power!"

Oh.

This again.

Ryuga felt a surge of temper push the dragon forwards in his consciousness, so, so close to the barrier between human and constellation. "You have nothing you can offer me."

"Power," the man said immediately. "Wealth. Position. Anything you want." He sounded very certain of himself. "You wanted to rule the world once, didn't you? We can give that to you. All you need to do is work with me."

He'd heard that line before and fallen for it. Never again.

Ryuga drew himself up to his full six-foot height, all flashing eyes and swirling cape, and let the dragon's aura suffuse into the air until it was unclear where the dragon ended and the sky began. "I said, _move._ "

For a second, it looked like the man was going to object, but then Bao grabbed his arm and yanked him out of Ryuga's path.

" _Don't_ , Johannes," Ryuga heard him mutter. "I've seen that look in Aguma's eyes before. He's made his mind up. He'd rather destroy himself than help us now."

That wasn't quite true. Ryuga would rather destroy _them,_ but it was close enough. Really, this Bao fellow was very interesting indeed. And the name Aguma seemed familiar…

The one who had beaten Gingka and Kyouya. _Now_ he remembered, and with the memory came another set of split desires. He'd already beaten Bao, but Bao wasn't the Legendary Blader. Aguma _was._ If he followed the helicopter, he would come face to face with Aguma again. He could challenge him straight away, and take his Star Fragment. But would that mean that Doji would take Tithi away again? And – worse (or maybe better, depending on the perspective) – was Aguma working with Doji? He must be. There was no other reason why they would get onto a helicopter together.

 _Ryuga,_ L-Drago said, his voice humming with warning. Ryuga knew what he meant. If the two he'd just dealt with knew about the Legendary Bladers, and they'd taken Tithi because he was _useful_ , then that meant Doji knew about the Star Fragments. And _that_ meant that this whole thing was one of Doji's plots.

All this time, and it was all coming back around to Doji and Dark Nebula all over again. Ryuga had been involved in this from the very beginning and he'd never even noticed.

Wait.

 _L-Drago, how did you not notice that Aguma was there? You should have been able to feel the power of his Star Fragment!_

L-Drago seethed. _It must have been masked by Tithi's,_ he spat. _I told you Tithi's was getting stronger. I… I made a mistake. I thought his light was the only one there._

There was nothing they could do to fix the past. Ryuga knew that. All they could deal with was the present, especially when the present seemed to be determined to drag up the ghosts of the past.

 _Find him, L-Drago._

 _I have them. Let's go._

With his eyes burning with rage, Ryuga stepped forwards into the lightning one more time, leaving behind his baffled and battered opponents in a crack of thunder.

How dare they try to take what was _his_.


End file.
